


you'll be the death of me

by skylights



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Action/Adventure, Also a travelogue but with more spies, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Attempts at witty dialogue, Fluff, Glacial slow actually, M/M, Romance, Self-indulgent as always, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-09
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-08 10:01:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 34,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4300527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skylights/pseuds/skylights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Please," says Q loftily even as he turns at the sound of the front door opening, a rain-bedraggled couple already heading for a table not too far from Bond's. "As flattered as I am to hear that you're already anticipating another cup, you shouldn't presume so much, Mr. Bond. Cyanide is expensive these days, you know, and on the contrary, I actually have it on good authority that our coffee is good enough to die for, if not to die <i>from</i>." </p><p>(Or the one where Death owns a coffeeshop on the corner and Bond has been cultivating the surprisingly useful habit of Not Dying. A love story, of sorts.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kru](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kru/gifts).



> Submitted as part of the 2015 WiP Big Bang
> 
> This is for you, [Kru](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Kru/profile), I'm so sorry it took...just a little under two years to get done D;
> 
> Also, thank you you to all the usual suspects (Dan, Lis, Sam) for looking over this again and again _and again_ over the past few months  <3 You patience knows no bounds!
> 
> And last but not least: look at [all these lovely graphics that scifishipper@LJ made for this](http://scifishipper.livejournal.com/157596.html?view=2058396#t2058396)!! Thank you for all your work, getting to do this big bang with you was an absolute pleasure <3
> 
>  
> 
> [ ](http://s784.photobucket.com/user/scifishipper/media/OTHER/youll%20be%20the%20death%20of%20me%20600px_zpsfvapnutj.jpg.html)  
> 

Kandahar is ablaze when Bond first sees him. The buildings almost seem to catch fire at dusk here, cracked bricks and dust-smeared minarets turning a burnt, desert red under the setting sun, and by the time the first muezzin lifts his voice for the evening call to prayer, the city has eased itself into the dark of the evening, shadows taking over the colours of umber and sienna on the walls.

Over the flat roofs, words of the _adhan_ are rising. 

_Hayya'alas-ṣalāh._

(Hasten, to worship.)

_Hayya ʿalal-falāḥ._

(Hasten, to success.)

Bond knows the timing by heart now, knows with a time-worn intimacy how long each syllable will echo and hang, suspended, in the pause between every new line.

Less than a minute left on the clock, then.

That's not too long left to die.

  


* * *

  


In retrospect, it might have been curiously apt had Bond cared for such things. 

The _adhan_ is one of the few constants left untouched by either falling empire or rising war and yet, here he is, somehow ostensibly daring to balance on the precipice of change. Death, after all, is one of life's truly big adventures and the lurch that Bond feels in his chest at the prospect is almost obscene in its boldness, unspeakable in its liberation.

That doesn't make this any less of a completely asinine way to go, though. 

Shot through the chest like some wet behind the ears amateur on his first day out on the field? Going down without even a decent fight to remember it by? 

Bond draws a raspy breath that sends air rattling wetly through his lungs and thinks, slightly irritably, about how he would have laughed at the sheer tediousness of it all if he could muster up enough strength to do it, or if he could find any actual humour in the situation. 

It’s just a fleeting thought in the end, anyways, here one inhale and dissipating by the next.

Breathe.

Another lungful of dusty air. 

And breathe.

Another inch of his shirt turning sticky with new blood.

Bond stares at the darkening sky and waits, a weight resting uncomfortably in his chest.

  


* * *

  


It'll be dark, soon. Cold as well, despite the way the Afghan heat has clung to him like a stubborn mistress since sunrise, leaving fingers of warmth trailing along the small of his back and lurking, undesired, in the way his shirt sticks uncomfortably close to sweat-slicked skin.

Though the light is starting to fade, Bond is still acutely aware of all the places the sun has touched today and he thinks he can even pinpoint the exact coordinates if he was forced to, accurate down to the very last degree:

Here, where dry heat has split his lips open, half-formed scabs over the cracks tasting like rust. 

Here too, where afternoon sun has baked the cement floor that's now pressed against his back, coarse surface radiating an uncomfortable warmth.

He really should know better at this stage, but Bond still ends up trying to move all the same, only to end up wincing when the pockmarked surface of the ground scrapes painfully against his exit wound. It’s borderline absurd, but Bond is sure that he can almost, just almost feel the individual grains of grit and sand pressing deeper into the rupture.

Careless. So careless, and admittedly, not even for the first time that day, too.

With that particular thought circling round to resurface his mind again, Bond finds himself...irked, on some fundamental level. Surely there’s some sort of argument he can make here, for this whole fiasco? Something about the semantics of luck versus skill when it comes to dodging sniper bullets, or a rebuttal against the logistics of dodging something you can’t even see coming to begin with?

When Bond wets his lips, he tastes blood.

Then again, it’s not like this is an argument that Bond can win. A gunshot wound can put quite the damper, on any valid points that he could have made in his defence. 

God, who knew dying would be this hard?

  


* * *

  


It's the sound of the boy's robes that Bond hears first, whisper soft and trailing over the red-yellow dust that scatters into the evening air as he inches closer. 

"Go away," Bond hisses in broken Farsi as he rouses himself just enough to find the right words in the right language. "What are you even doing here?"

Despite his warnings, a young-ish looking still face insists on swimming blearily into view. Desert wind has whipped the boy's _keffiyeh_ out of place and it's with a careless ease that he turns his face away to tuck the fabric back where it belongs, checkered cloth wrapped loosely to cover the bottom half of his face so that all Bond sees is a flash of green in the growing dark.

Probably one of the local Pashtuns then, skipping Maghrib prayers on the roofs and lured here by the sudden crack of gunfire, lingering on out of boyish, ill-timed curiosity. The careful distance the boy keeps from Bond’s immediate reach means that he's smart to not trust strangers, never mind whether they’re dying or not, but from the way he's still crouched by Bond's side, he's evidently not smart enough to know the difference between when to stay and when to go. 

Call it sentiment, but Bond can't help but narrow his eyes at that. 

"It's not safe," Bond tries again when the boy doesn't move. 

If anything, he leans in closer still and inexplicably, Bond can't help wondering if this is the first time the boy has watched a man die. Try as he might, there’s a strange light in those eyes that Bond finds he can’t meet for too long. 

"Get away from here," Bond says weakly and there it is again, Bond somehow finding that his gaze has drifted to where a stray curl of hair is brushing the very top of the boy's ear.

Even with his own heartbeat starting to pound far too loud in his ears, Bond can already hear faint shouts of commotion floating up from the street, ugly yells and barked orders to stand aside, stand aside, move _goddamn_ you. The first signs of backup, then, or whatever messy alternative Kandahar has to offer, though it’s not like they’ll be able to do much good at this point.

"Go," Bond says once more to the boy. “You’re going to get yourself killed or worse, if you stay here.” He’d meant for sharp intent to give weight to his voice, but when he speaks, it comes out hoarse instead, Bond swallowing dryly in the aftermath.

“Fuck,” he mutters to himself and the hand that Bond raises to wave the boy back to whatever shadows he’d come from feels far too heavy to be real. “Go on, then. _Go_.”

Maybe it's the sudden burst of frustrated aggression in Bond's voice, or even the lapse back into English, but the boy's eyes widen at the sound, growing wary with something far too sharp, too pointed to truly be fear, and it’s in that exact moment that Bond gets the strange impression that this is not the boy's first death.

Somehow, the thought is almost a comforting one.

"You'd do good to go as far away as possible," Bond continues on in English when the boy stands from where he'd been hunched over by Bond's side. Even though Bond doubts that the boy understands half of what Bond is trying to say, the intent must have been clear enough for him to be leaving, and for that at least, Bond is thankful. 

His own death isn't something that Bond minds much, but collateral damage still is, and always will be an ugly word. 

"Don't come back here again until we're all gone, okay?"

The boy's robes rustle in reply when he brushes dust from his knees and he's just a shadow now, a slender darkness that hovers over Bond. 

"Now get going, you don’t want to be here when backup arrives," Bond says, that much more tired than he had been a moment ago. 

A tiny grain of sand has come to rest on his eyelash and Bond is trying to blink it away, only to find that having his eyes closed suddenly makes things so much more comfortable. The pain, the inevitable regret, even the mild annoyance, it’s all easier to pack away and forget about in the dark.

"I'll be fine."

Bond keeps his eyes shut then, drifting, and as his thoughts fade untethered into inconsequence, Bond finds that the last thing he thinks of is how curious it is, to be able to feel the boy’s gaze still standing a quiet watch over him.

  


* * *

  


Bond doesn’t die.

Of course he doesn’t.

Instead, Bond comes awake in fits and bursts to bright lights, a stinging, yet heavy pain resting in the hollow of his chest. 

Again. 

Again. 

Again. 

Sometimes, it’s easier. Sometimes, it hurts more than Bond would like to admit. 

Black to grey to white. From the hum of engines to the beep of machines, voices speaking in snatches of languages Bond knows he should understand.

“Thank you,” he remembers slurring at some point, even though everything hurts like hell itself and being dead actually feels like a perfectly acceptable alternative to going through this. His chest feels like it's on fire and when his hands clench at the burn, Bond's fingers dig into the scratchy fabric of cheap-starched sheets, the tang of antiseptic flooding his airways when he gasps. 

Hospital, then. One of the military ones, probably.

"You're quite welcome," says a voice that comes from somewhere to Bond's left. “Now please, stop moving, you’re going to tear the stitches out again if you do.”

A face blurs into view, but turning his head just that small fraction has exhausted Bond beyond his limits and when his eyes slip shut again, blessed, blessed sleep is there to pull him under.

  


* * *

  


The thing about death is that once it’s had a taste of you, the damned thing won’t consent to leave you alone. Even after MI6 quietly handles Bond's discharge, death still trails after him , dogging his heels like some sort of starving mutt that won't stop begging for scraps of his life. 

_Down, boy_ Bond feels like saying most days, but it’s not something he can change all that easily.

It's there, in the way that Bond's breath comes short even after weeks of being grounded. 

Lingering still, when Bond gasps awake in the middle of the night, pain lancing like a serrated blade through the place right under where his heart is cradled.

Whenever they do manage to make him show up for his appointments, they make it a point to tell him how lucky he is to be alive, and that while he’ll heal with time, the wound will scar badly. 

Not that all of this will mean anything to Bond anyways, in the long term.

Scars, wounds, the maddening itch of new skin being stretched out again and again, over the same old, tired bones.

He stands in front of his bathroom mirror some days, tracing the ways his body has insisted on clinging stubbornly to life and he thinks then, absently, how none of it actually bothers him in the slightest anymore. 

Bond and death, after all, are the best of friends by now.

  


* * *

  


Sometimes, Bond wonders about the boy. Even thinks to check up after him, because if MI6’s Afghan operations have already gone through the trouble of somehow airlifting his sorry, half-dead arse out of Kandahar, a small, throwaway question like this wouldn't seem like too much to ask for.

Had he been there, when the retrieval team arrived? 

What about the things he remembers? Does he understand what he saw that night?

Is he even _alive_?

The weeks crawl on into some semblance of summer and by the time the weather cools, his bandages have begun to come off as well, strips of gauze being shed just as the season starts to change.

Everywhere, footpaths are turning colourful with the death of leaves. Clouds are throwing rain at his window, settling in for the long haul.

When Bond stops waking up in the middle of the night, he finds that somehow, he’s stopped wondering too, about the boy.

And life goes on.

  


* * *

  


It’s a dark, wet day in London when Bond steps out of his flat. His ribs still throb when he walks, breath pressing sticky fingers against his chest with every step, but it's an ache he has learnt to live with for now, every bruise and every dull flare of pain like a stubborn reminder that _yes_ he's still alive.

Not that this godawful weather is anything he's remotely grateful to be alive in. 

Barely past nine in the morning and the sky has already gone a slate grey, city slick with wet shadows and shallow, dirty puddles that Bond skirts with care. It's miserable weather to be out and about in, but desperate times call for desperate measures and this is only the third week since Bond has left the hospital, the fifth time he's been out on the street. 

Coincidentally, also the first time he's woken up to a spluttering machine and an empty carafe of coffee. 

A semi-invalid he might be at the present, but a ruthless heathen he is not. Bond didn't claw his way back into the land of the living just to drink instant coffee. 

All things considered, _maybe_ it's a weak excuse and the reality of the situation is Bond can't stand another hour of staring at the same few, sparsely decorated walls of his apartment, an itch he can't scratch starting to roam under his skin. 

Maybe there's a restlessness stirring in his bones that refuses to go away and Bond needs to wash the lingering taste of blood and sand out of his mouth, relearn how English syllables sound on his tongue.

Or maybe, Bond just needs to get out more. 

Whatever it is though, he’s been told to point and shoot for reasons just as flimsy as these, so thank Queen and country for not all causes having to be valid before they're acted upon.

  


* * *

  


Bond ducks into a quiet street just as the weather starts to take a turn for the worse, trading the hum of mid-afternoon traffic on the main road for the quiet staccato sound of rainfall. His wanderings have taken him to the western border of Chelsea and this particular pavement is currently only being shared with the odd pedestrian or two, fellow blank-faced Londoners that bob past him under the cover of dark umbrellas. 

Blessedly, at least there's no sense of urgency here. No rush, no harried crowd speed-walking past him with their misplaced elbows digging in his side and frenzied determination sprinting them forwards. 

If pressed, Bond might almost say it's...pleasant, for lack of a better word. 

Or at least, as pleasant as pleasant can be when rainwater is starting to soak the turned-up collar of his coat and his socks are getting damp from stepping in too many unexpected puddles.

Evidently, this is the point in Bond's day where he should start to regret bringing a gun out with him and not an umbrella.

  


* * *

  


The sky looks like it's one peal of thunder away from a full out storm when Bond finally admits that he'd best get out of the rain. There's not much street left to wander down anyways, so Bond just shoves his hands deeper into his coat pockets as he covers those last few metres in long, even strides, aiming purposefully for the misplaced-looking cafe that's crowded onto the very end of the shop row. 

It's a decrepit little thing, all old wood decor and rickety looking furniture from what Bond can tell, but interior decorating choices hardly matter now that it's the only shop within a half mile radius that looks warm, dry, and most importantly, open.

Café proclaims the cursive lettering on the front window rather informatively, and try as Bond might, he can't seem to find any other name attached to the place. 

How terribly imaginative.

Nonetheless, a cafe is still a cafe by any other name (or lack of, thereof) and the bell above the door chimes when Bond pushes his way indoors, the sound of it drawing out an accompanying clang of metal from behind the heavy-wood counter. 

An eloquently muttered "Fucking _stirrers_ ," follows that up soon after and a wild-haired employee straightens from where Bond assumes the stirrers in question should be.

"Sorry, we're not open till ten on-" he's starting to say after barely getting an eyeful of Bond, but a sudden, low groan of thunder rumbling outside and Bond's generally waterlogged appearance cuts him short.

"No, wait, never mind that," he amends abruptly. Bond finds that he has to fight down the urge to raise an eyebrow at the sudden change of heart. "Get in here before you let more rain in all over the floor, it's already half to anyways." 

A flustered wave of his hand towards the table closest to the counter has Bond thankfully stepping inside and the door swings shut behind him, muting the storm. 

In its absence, the sound of Bond dripping rainwater and the accompanying squelch of his wet shoes squeaking on the floor has become almost embarrassingly loud. 

"Shite weather we're having as usual, isn't it?" asks the barista blithely as Bond goes about settling into this newfound dryness.

Coat off, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, Bond can feel the chair creaking as he twists around in it to hang his coat over the back of an adjacent seat and at the counter, the man (Bond is just about 51% sure he's of legal age) is moving about as well, meticulously slotting the previously cursed-at stirrers into a holder. The faintest strains of music are seeping into the warm air and if it feels blandly surreal, for some reason, it’s not wholly unpleasant.

"Shite doesn't even begin to cover it," Bond says amiably in reply. In the background, the lead piano warbles through a chromatic scale that disintegrates into some jazz-infused variation. "And thank you for letting me in here a bit early, by the way. You really didn't have to."

The barista throws Bond a Look and an accompanying shrug, as if the blasé attitude of the latter could somehow lessen the effect of his earlier, slightly exasperated attitude.

"I'm sure the alternative of kicking you out into that-" He throws an empathetic look at the fresh sheet of rain lashing at the windows fronting the store, "- would have done wonders for the café's reputation."

"So it's down to reputation and not conscience?" Bond lets amusement slip into his voice and thinks, oh why shouldn't he? It's not like some mindless flirting has ever hurt anyone...much. Bond has time and heart-space to spare anyways, and besides, he's hardly don't anything this entire morning. 

Also, it's not like there are _rules_ for these kinds of things.

"If I had been concerned for my conscience, I would have said so."

Nimble hands have left the stirrers alone and are currently doing complicated things with the espresso machine, Bond finding himself smiling even though (and maybe because) the barista can't see it. 

Most of the human interaction he's had so far has been in the form of jittery MI6-sanctioned medical staff and jaded handlers checking in to see he hasn't died in his sleep, so this, in all it's civilian dullness, is actually quite a nice break in the routine. As much as Bond detests the mindlessness of small talk, the sharp twinges in his chest serve as a pertinent reminder as to how he hasn't actually had an honest-to-god, real conversation in weeks.

"Coffee?" comes the tentative question and it snaps Bond out of his contemplations regarding both his lack of a social life and the fact that the said lack isn't bothering him too much. "For the record, I'm asking for reputation's sake again, since this is a cafe, albeit one that's still technically closed."

"If you don't mind? And thanks for the reminder, I don't think I got it the first two times."

He gets thrown a wryly amused look, but Bond holds his ground, meeting it straight on with a quirk of his own mouth. 

"Preferences for coffee, then?"

"How about you surprise me?"

The barista makes a half snort, half scoffing sound and so maybe that hadn't been Bond's smoothest line to date, but who can blame him? A near brush with death can put any man out of his game.

Lack of practice notwithstanding, the espresso machine whirrs to life all the same and the warm, comforting smell of freshly brewed coffee, the quiet hiss of hot milk being frothed manages to chase out the rain-damp that Bond has brought in with him. 

It’s nice to know, that maybe Bond's knee-jerk reflex isn't a lost cause after all.

"We source our own beans," the barista says with a touch of pride when he brings the cup over to Bond's table. "Our house special for the moment is Salvadoran, honey-pressed. There's sugar on the table if you need it, but I've heard it's sweet enough on it's own to not warrant using too much, or even any at all."

"You've heard?" Bond says lightly even as he accepts the cup with a nod of thanks. He's counting it as sheer luck that he's been made a flat white instead of one of those tiny little lattes in tiny little glasses that more and more cafés are favouring these days. 

It's the chic thing to drink, apparently, but as with many things, Bond really couldn't care less. 

"Should I be trusting a barista who doesn't sound like he's sure about how his own house blend should be taken?"

"It's not my fault that my own tastes tend to run a little sweeter than the norm," comes the dry reply. "But by all means, test it for cyanide and the like first, if you're so inclined."

Bond grins and true to word, the coffee does smell a tad sweet, with an almost fruity undertone lingering in it's scent when Bond brings the cup up towards him.

"And let a fresh cup of coffee go to waste in the process? I think not,-" Bond lets his gaze dart surreptitiously to the name tag that the barista is wearing, "-Q." Quaint, but it’s not like Bond hasn't seen stranger names, though, and Q has a look about him that's practically daring Bond to question his name-choice. 

Bond may be a daredevil, but he’s certainly not an idiot, so he wisely cuts straight to drinking his coffee. 

The first sip goes down easy, spice-infused caramel tinged with the barest hint of red berries resting on his palate long after he has swallowed. It's sweet, as Q had mentioned, but not overwhelmingly so, and Bond comes to the conclusion that yes, he does actually really like the coffee, pretentiousness and all. 

Maybe the revelation is showing on his face as well, because the next time he looks up, Q is looking decidedly pleased with himself, the smile that he's wearing having gone from distantly polite to outright smug in a mere matter of seconds.

"Well?" Q demands.

"I think I can say quite safely at this point, that there isn't any cyanide in it."

Bond sets the cup down on the table and there's reluctant amusement playing across Q's features, Q folding his arms as he regards both cup and man still holding onto it.

"Unless you give me any reason to include it in your order, I'm now giving you the assurance that most, if not all of our products are non-toxic and will be unlikely to cause death."

"A lot can happen short of death."

"Is that an accusation I hear, Mr.-"

"Bond. James Bond."

"Well is it, Mr. Bond?

Bond lets his finger trace the rim of his cup, absently wondering whether he's actually enjoying himself or if this is just another sign that he should get out more. 

Maybe it's just the result of getting a really satisfying caffeine fix, all under the scrutinising gaze of a barista who's inexplicably more fascinating than any number of people that Bond has had the pleasure to come across in months. 

It's a warm feeling though, whatever it is, and Bond isn't the kind of man to say no to any form of pleasure, artificial as it may be.

"It's an observation, more like," Bond finally concedes. "Did that just earn me a shot of cyanide for my next cup?"

"Please," says Q loftily even as he turns at the sound of the front door opening, a rain-bedraggled couple already heading for a table not too far from Bond's. "As flattered as I am to hear that you're already anticipating another cup, you shouldn't presume so much, Mr. Bond. Cyanide is expensive these days, you know, and on the contrary, I actually have it on good authority that our coffee is good enough to die for, if not to die from." 

The couple are scraping chairs across the floor, already sinking noisily into them with the air of people who've seen too much rain in too short a time. 

"Now if you'll excuse me, I have some orders to see to. "

With that, he's already halfway to the new customers before Bond can even think of an appropriate comeback, but no matter. 

Without Q bearing down on him from above, it actually makes it easier for Bond to finally take a proper _look_ at the other man, when earlier, all he'd managed to notice was the way Q's eyes had caught some trick of light to almost look green for a moment, when he moved away. But no, it's just a brief play of imagination, Q's eyes brown and bright with a living curiosity that regards him every now and then from behind those black-rimmed glasses perched on his nose.

From further away now and mistakes aside, it's with a growing interest that Bond notes the middling height and birdsnest-tousled hair, the black apron that's tied around his hips. 

Built lithely in the way that's more lean than fragile, Q has long, long fingers attached to expressive hands that flutter as he explains something or other, gesturing to a food display at the far end of the counter that Bond had somehow missed when he first walked in. 

_Fascinating_ , Bond finds himself thinking as he sips at his coffee. The minutes stretch, growing into a half hour that slinks on further still, and by then, more customers have already trickled past the doors in a steady stream, most seeking something hot to have in their hands or a take-away from whatever's on display that day, be it a pastry, a sandwich, or even the odd slice or two. 

It's with a bland amusement that Bond watches a mousy looking office worker victoriously make off with the last salmon-and-avocado-on-rye and not for the first time that day, Bond has to wonder at how this has suddenly become his life. 

Once or twice, whenever he's not swamped with orders, Q shoots a questioning look over to where Bond is still seated, coffee drunk down to the dregs by now. 

_?_ he seems to imply with every glance and Bond will only shake his head, an affirmation that he doesn't need anything for now, thank you. It feels just shy of cruel to have only one person staffing the cafe, but the more that Bond watches Q (and it's innocent in it's intent, really) the more Bond is convinced that it might actually be better this way. The cafe isn't large by any standard of measurement, seating maybe a maximum of fifteen all squeezed in, but Q moves with the air of someone who knows exactly where he should go and what he should be doing.

To be honest, it’s all incredibly _engaging_ to watch.

By the time a gaggle of students come in to take up the long, six-seater table that hugs the wall closest to Bond, Bond takes it as an unspoken cue that he should stop this minor case of unexpected infatuation and leave before the rains starts up again. 

And of course, Q has to choose that moment to sidle over.

"Leaving?" he asks lightly, as if Bond gathering his things isn’t an obvious enough sign, and Bond shrugs, cocking his head towards the general direction of the storefront where watery sunlight is fighting to filter through the glass. 

"I'm not too sure how long the rain will hold off for. Also, it feels a bit selfish to continue taking up a table when I've finished with my order so long ago."

It's a lie and a half, which is still a less than what Bond is used to, but then again, he's been out of practice.

Q hums in mild agreement and gathers up Bond's cup, smoothly slipping a tiny scrap of paper onto the table in it's place before he's called away again, yet another customer ringing the bell at the counter to have his muffin reheated.

Well. Now _this_ is unexpected.

Bond turns the scrap over, careful to keep his expression mostly neutral even though he's grinning wide on the inside.

"Cheeky," he mutters under his breath and Q catches his eye just as Bond stands, damp coat slung over his arm. 

A nod for a smile and Bond completely forgets to buy new coffee beans on the way back home.

  


* * *

  


**on the house, but not because I have a conscience.**

  


* * *

  


A misplaced sense of pride demands that Bond somehow stay away from Q's cafe for at least three, severely under-caffeinated days before the lure of good coffee and multi-layered smiles draws him back again. Inexplicably, the idea of actually going out to buy actual coffee beans during that time doesn't even cross Bond's mind.

"Mr.Bond," Q says easily when Bond walks in at the much more decent hour of 11:20am. In the cheery, late morning sun, the cafe looks warmer than Bond remembers, wooden floors and smooth-worn panelling on the walls catching the light. "Back so soon?"

"Drop the mister and just call me James, please." The cafe is blessedly empty at this time of the day, office workers already at work and students in class, so Bond gravitates towards the table he had been seated at the last time, mindful of how it puts him within a comfortable distance of the counter.

Today, Q seems to be preoccupied with stacking and arranging freshly dried cups.

"Bond, then." The name rolls off Q's tongue with far too much flourish as he polishes the side of a glass and Bond looks away before he can notice how Q's lips part to vocalise the first part of– oh, _hell._

"You do seem more like a Bond than a James, in any case," Q is continuing on heedlessly, clearly unaware of the sort of mental scolding that Bond is giving himself. "So what shall it be today? The Salvadoran blend? Or can I recommend our lovely new Brazilian roast, if you're after something with a bit more of a creamy undertone in it?"

Truth be told, Bond isn't that big of a coffee connoisseur. By all means, he'll take at least a cup a day and maybe consider IV-lining it straight into his bloodstream if need be, but Bond isn't the kind to read up on the finer details. If it doesn't come from the bowels of some vending machine, isn't liquid sludge, or isn't (god forbid) instant, Bond will gladly take the role of uneducated heathen and drink whatever is out in front of him without question.

Q, on the other hand, seems to take delight in knowing all there is to know about whatever coffee he's serving up that day. 

It's comforting knowledge to have, given how Q is actually in charge of _brewing_ what goes down his customers' throats, but it's also...strangely endearing, for the lack of a better word. Bond doesn't know what he'll do with all this newfound trivia about regions and micro-regions, elevations and drying processes, but he does come away from it with the double prize of one very pleased Q and a delectable long black that tastes like smooth caramel on his tongue, so at the very least, Bond now knows that what they say about any sort of knowledge never being wasted is partially true.

"Do you get new beans very often?" Bond asks when silence has lulled itself back into existence. There's nothing but the barely discernible sound of soft, atmospheric jazz meandering around in the background as Q moves behind the counter and he lifts his head almost instantly at the sound of Bond's voice, latte glass in hand.

"Not as often as I'd like, honestly, but I do try. Fair trade aside, it's always so much cheaper to get things directly from the source."

"And so you handle all of this-" Bond makes an encompassing hand gesture at the surroundings, "-just by yourself?"

"Do you see anyone else here at the moment?" comes the retort, though it's without any real bite. "In all seriousness though, both yes and no. I'd like to, if it were possible, but I do have someone who takes care of the more...logistical and administrative details. On paper, I own the place, but in reality, I really just make the coffee. And wash the dishes, wipe down the tables, deal with the customers, et cetera, et cetera." 

Bond has to hide his amusement behind the rim of his cup as he processes this new glut of information, taking a long swallow that has Q eventually turning back to his latte glasses. Stacks dry, he's starting to ease them carefully into something that might, at some angles, resemble a straight line.

"Shocked into silence that I actually own the place?" Q prods when Bond is still trying to figure out what he should address first. 

"More due the fact that you can still find the time to make coffee in the midst of everything."

"Good coffee, I hope?" 

Bond lifts his cup in a mock salute. "It's certainly drinkable, if you were fishing for compliments.”

With the latte glasses done, Q seems to be at a temporary loss as to what to do with his hands next, and it's only after his fingers have snatched a rag off it's hook on the wall that Q speaks again,

"At the very most–," Q says as he runs the rag under some warm water, "–you can fit...twelve, maybe fifteen people in here? It's hardly ever filled to full capacity, at any rate, and people who do deign to come in here generally can afford to wait a bit longer than usual for their fix. Case in point." 

A knowing look is directed at Bond, who just meets it straight on with a magnanimous air. 

"Guilty as charged."

Q has moved out from beyond the counter to go wipe down the table closest to the door and Bond resolutely does _not_ make it too obvious that he's tracking Q's every move, body angled just the right amount to let Q know Bond's still engaged in the conversation. 

"Even though it must be said that my supplier isn't exactly awful, let's be honest. It's not the food that people come here for." Q is bent over some stain on the tabletop that Bond can't see, working at it with the rag and Bond is resolutely _not_ looking at the way Q's trousers are stretched over the curve of his arse. "And before you say anything, I'm pretty sure they don't come here for my stirring, in-depth conversations as well."

"Then surely it's for your stellar personality?" Among other things, Bond adds, in the privacy of his own head. 

"Ha bloody ha." Q gives the table one last wipe down before moving on to the next one, a cramped little two-seater tucked away in the corner. "I don't know what you're here for, Bond, but people generally come here when they want to be left alone for a while. And I swear, I'm usually quite adept at doing that."

"Could have fooled me," Bond adds in smoothly before Q can even continue on and Q casts a look over his shoulder, Bond catching the edges of a wry grin.

"Has it occurred to you, perhaps, that I wasn't trying to fool you?" 

"And if it has?"

Q huffs a laugh, turning his concentration back onto sweeping stray crumbs into the waiting cup of his palm, bending over the expanse of the table yet again to get at that one place by the wall. Over at his own table, Bond tries to be interested in the way his coffee has stained the sides of his cup a sandy brown.

"Then we both have to work on either subtlety or proper communication." Straightening ever so slowly, Q still has his back towards Bond, but the amusement in his voice is unmistakable. "Now drink the rest of your coffee, Bond. It's getting cold."

  


* * *

  


They fall into the loosest approximation of a routine, if it can even be called as such. Bond traipses into the cafe every other mid-morning to subject himself to whatever exotic brew that Q has taken a fancy to that day and Q, in turn, lets their strange, half-flirtatious, mostly-inane conversations run ever longer still before calling his usual truce. 

So what if every other morning has turned into Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday of that week? 

And so what if Bond keeps (in)conveniently forgetting to pick up coffee beans at the store?

Q sets down a Kenyan blend that leaves the lingering taste of black currants in Bond's mouth before slipping back behind the counter to cater to the newest walk-in. There's a tiny, barely visible smudge of espresso dust smeared under the curve of Q's jaw and Bond knows this not only because Q had leaned in a little too close to set today's cup on the table, but because Bond had turned towards Q's presence as well, tilted his head up and smiled with all the confidence of knowing it'd be returned.

Another day passes. Bond drinks yet another cup and slowly, the tightness in his chest eases, only to be replaced with something else that Bond cannot really understand. It's restlessness, probably, or at least that's what Bond tells himself. The sort of feeling that comes with being in a place for too long, with too little to do and too much to consider, Bond fairly unsure of whether he actually likes this feeling or is unspeakably wary of of it. 

In any case:

It's only a matter of time before Q introduces Bond to the wonders of aeropressed coffee and Bond, in turn, finds out that Q blasphemously prefers tea over everything else.

"How do I even trust you with my coffee?" Bond wonders out loud when the truth is revealed. 

"Oh ye of little faith, have you not tasted and seen that it is good?" comes the reply from behind the counter and Bond thinks, quietly, about how faith might have nothing to do with it.

  


* * *

  


It's not his fault that the coffee is good here, Bond thinks stubbornly to himself when he sits at his usual table on yet another rain-splattered weekday.

Honestly, Bond can get coffee anywhere, and it's not like Q's cafe is the only one within walking distance of Bond's flat. There're countless others, obviously. Dozens, even, but it's just that _this_ one is more convenient than the rest, and it's quiet whenever Bond comes in. 

Also, there's something to be said about Q being the barista here. Even more to be said about almost halfway to nearly being friends with said barista.

Bond drinks his coffee with these quiet rationalisations for company and tries not to remember how he lies for a living.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Maybe...–,” he adds slowly, “–maybe I'll even end up getting the measurements wrong."
> 
> "Which is why I wrote them out for you," Q points out sensibly. "They're _right_ there, see?"
> 
> “Yes, yes, and they’re very well written too, might I add. But you know how mistakes can happen, right?” The container carefully goes back into its bag and that done, Bond leans forward, voice dropped to sound conspiratorial. “Wouldn’t it be so much easier if you just came with me and handmade each cup instead?"
> 
> "Wouldn’t it be more polite to at least extend an offer of dinner before asking me to go traipsing across half of civilisation?” Q snipes back. “Also, manual work is expensive, so I’m expecting at least a ten-course degustation menu, at the bare minimum.”

The day that Bond gets called back to Vauxhall, Q makes him a creamy, barely sweetened Guatemalan brew, accents of honey and jasmine already curling out from where Q is carefully pouring the coffee into a cardboard takeaway cup.

"So you _do_ have a job after all," Q says, voice shaded with faux-appreciation. Now that most of the bandages have come off, Bond can finally slip back into one of his nicer suits without worrying too much about blood getting onto the insides of his jacket. 

"How else do you think I can afford to sit here every other morning and drink your coffee, otherwise?"

Q lifts his shoulder in an approximation of a shrug and the cup is pleasantly warm when Q presses it into Bond's hands, the brush of Q's fingers against Bond's barely there before they're not at all.

"Does this mean I can finally let other customers sit at the table by the counter again?"

"Ah, yes," says Bond with a sagely air. "The other customers. Is it a riotous horde of them that I’m hearing at this very moment, the lot of them pounding at the door in an attempt to get in and to that one table?"

The dirty look at Q gives Bond is enough to make the latter laugh, low and slightly indulgent, Q rolling his eyes before eventually letting a smile slip past as well. At the rate this is going, Bond is going to be late for his ten o'clock with Mallory if he doesn't leave the cafe soon. 

Then again, he's never actually been early before, so the tardiness doesn't rest too heavily on his conscience.

"I hope that horde of mine mauls you on the way out," Q says with extreme feeling as he dumps a used milk steaming pitcher into the sink. "Or at the very least, makes you spill your coffee all over yourself." 

With no other witnesses besides Bond, Q can afford the dramatics today, the last customer having wandered in over half an hour ago looking for breakfast before wandering out again a mere five minutes later, clutching a bag of muffins and a takeaway soy latte. 

"If that does happen–,” muses Bond, “–I'll just have to come back in here for another one, won’t I? If you wanted to see me again so soon, you could have just asked, you know.”

Already halfway to the door, it’s only due to a carefully cultivated familiarity and a curious affinity for remembering how the quirk of Q’s lips look like, that Bond can imagine the long-suffering look Q is probably wearing on his face right now.

When was it that they had somehow become _this_ , he wonders. When, with the easy banter and caffeine-laced smiles? 

Tightening his grip ever so slightly on his coffee, Bond pauses with his hand on the door.

"Q?” he calls, casual as anything. When Bond looks over his shoulder, Q is just in the process of bending over, about to check on the remaining scones in the food display. “Just one more thing, before I go.”

“Hmm?” The look that Q gives him is expectant, if a little distracted. “What is it now, Bond?”

"Don't let anyone sit at my table."

  


* * *

  


The rich oak details of Mallory's office is as luxurious as money can buy, but the moment Bond steps into the wood-trimmed interior, he can't help but note that it's somewhat...lacking, still. For all the comfort that it's supposed to exude, Bond still feels as if he's walked into the MI6 equivalent of a principal's office, never mind the fact that Mallory can be more executioner than educator, most days.

"Take a seat double-oh seven," Mallory says bluntly in lieu of an actual greeting and Bond slides into one of the two chairs in front of Mallory's desk, seated far away enough to stretch his legs out in front of him. It’s been a long while, since Bond has started playing this game, so he knows exactly how to craft the perfect picture of ease, one that just manages to skirt the very boundary of indolence. These days though, it’s become more of a bad habit than anything, and Mallory, for one, has no time or patience for such games.

"You wanted to see me, sir?" Bond asks after a beat, out of sheer formality. As if the official missive sitting in his secure email hadn’t already been indication enough.

"Indeed I do. But before that." Casually shuffling papers around on his desk, Mallory is taking his time to clear enough space for the two dossiers that eventually get spread out between him and Bond. “How’s the health, Bond? On the mend I hope?”

"So it would seem, sir." 

“No complications?”

“Wouldn’t be sitting here if there were any.”

The look that Bond gives the impossibly thin file is a wary one and by now, he knows that thin can only mean one of two things: insanely difficult because of the sheer lack of information, or mind-numbingly easy, to the point where additional information isn't even necessary. 

Judging from the way Mallory is looking at him from across the desk, Bond already has a good idea as to which one it’s going to be this time around.

  


* * *

  


Because Mallory is a professional, he lingers on polite small talk for only the barest of moments, fleetingly establishing that Bond is more or less on the road to a full recovery before unceremoniously dropping Bond into what must the most _boring_ job of his career yet, as a double-oh. 

"It's a relatively simple operation," Mallory is saying as Bond decodes this to mean _you're still injured enough to have to settle with the kind of jobs only very slow children will get saddled with_. "Clean, fast. You'll be in and out within three days, if it all goes to plan." 

Implied very strongly here is the fact that there _is_ some semblance of a plan involved, and that Bond is meant to follow it. 

"We're looking for intel that'll only be available during that time frame–," Mallory continues on, "–so don't think that this is just some sort of welcome-back cakewalk because it bloody well isn't."

"Sir,” says Bond in mild agreement.

"The Zohara file should contain everything you need to know for the operation, which is to say, nothing much at all. There's little evidence of her having deep roots in the network and we have cause to believe that the contact she’ll be meeting with will be the first one of actual consequence.” 

Here, Mallory casts a critical look at Bond, who just puts a bit more effort into maintaining the outward impression of calm-relaxed-pleased when in truth, Bond is already hopelessly bored of the entire set-up. 

“What this means, double-oh seven–,” Mallory says pointedly, “–is we’re looking at a _non-confrontational_ approach. Do I make myself very clear on the matter?”

"Extremely, sir.”

"Then you are dismissed. Minimal kit this time around, as you can imagine. We'll send it round with the car at oh six hundred tomorrow."

  


* * *

  


As a general rule, Bond has nothing against Australia or any of her fine cities. Sydney is lovely for most part, if a little on the corporate side. Adelaide, harmless, if a bit too bland for his tastes, and no one really wants to talk about Canberra, so Bond will just leave it at that.

Melbourne, though. _Melbourne_. Where to even start? Too artsy by half and a tad smaller than advertised, though bigger in more ways you can possibly imagine. Or at least, that’s what Moneypenny had told him, when she saw him off at Vauxhall.

“You’re most likely going to hate it,” she’d said with sunny optimism, looking far too put together for 6:10am. Call it sour grapes if you must, but Bond finds that he distrusts her just a little bit more every time she shows up at ungodly hours looking like how she does. “Just imagine it as someone trying to move London halfway across world, but half arsing it in the process, so what you end up with is a rush job that you’ll still have to pay the same prices for.”

Big, small, artsy, London-like, all it hardly matters though, now that Bond is here. Melbourne is bathed in sunshine and swathed in a dry, blistering heat that holds no promise of reprieve for the next two weeks, and with the the mercury already at 32ºc when it’s not even past midday yet, Bond could hardly give a damn about whatever fancy adjective he’s supposed to use. 

All things considered, if Bond absolutely had to give a verdict, he thinks he’d be able to summarise it in three very concise words: really fucking _hot_.

  


* * *

  


By the time Thursday afternoon rolls around, Bond has drank what feels like a hundred cups of cold-drip coffee, alternating every so often between the clutch of cafes that give him clear views of Zohara’s office. It feels a bit like betrayal, sometimes, to be drinking brews that might or might not be better than Q's, but as he wilts a little more in the heat and sun of Melbourne’s summer-bright streets, the sheer distance of it from London’s wet, autumn-rain laneways makes it all the more easier to bury his guilt under the guise of prolonged jet-lag. 

In Bond’s defence, literally all sorts of coffee tastes good when he can still feel the drag of timezones against his eyelids and can’t tell French from aeropress, or semi-washed from natural. On the other hand though, it’s not like Bond can normally tell the difference, even on a full twelve hours of sleep, but..still. Isn’t it the sentiment that counts?

Condensation still dripping from the side of his latest cup, Bond is just about to consider putting yet another drink on the MI6 tab when Zohara steps out for her lunch break fifteen minutes early, Bond slipping his sunglasses as he gets up with a sigh. 

Truth be told, Bond doesn’t harbour any great hopes for this particular change in routine, and even as he steps out from the air-conditioned confines of the cafe into the blistering heat, Bond is yet again reminded about how he doesn’t even have any kind of hopeful sentiments about this entire job to begin with. Stakeout? Shadowing? If Mallory was anything like the old M, this could almost be a punishment of sorts, Bond relegated to the most distant colonies to basically spend his days sitting on his hands.

That, though, is a complaint for another day. 

Right now, Bond is side-stepping tourists and office drones alike as he tries to keep Zohara’s tall, lanky frame in sight, Zohara wandering almost aimlessly down Flinders Lane until she jaywalks across the tramlines to end up north of Elizabeth. From there, it’s just another block of easy strolling until Zohara ducks into a bookshop on the corner, a quaint, slightly cramped little place that’s crammed from front to back with odd stationary and shelves of magazines.

Inconspicuous, Bond meanders over to the Sports section while Zohara lingers at Hobbies, taking her place next to an older, distinguished-looking gentleman who silently shuffles away a little to give her space. Maybe it's a drop, or maybe Zohara just really likes reading about knitting patterns, but in the relative silence of the store, there's nothing more than the quiet flick-flick-flick of glossy pages being turned.

**Henderson to replace Gerrard** shouts the headlines on the magazine that Bond picks on a whim and it’s eight minutes of standing around pretending to be invested in a _FourFourTwo_ article about Liverpool later that Bond notes with a growing annoyance that Zohara still hasn’t glanced up from her perusal of _Simply Knitting_. Next to her, the man has swapped _Amateur Gardening_ for _Gardener’s World_.

In the end, it would have been too easy to miss if he hadn’t been looking for it, but since that’s precisely what Bond has grudgingly been doing, it’s with a relative ease that he eventually catches the piece of paper that’s being slipped inside the last few pages of _Gardener’s World_. 

Simple, perhaps, but at least it’s quick and to the point. Also, maybe even almost endearingly nostalgic, Bond having not seen this kind of spycraft since the late-90s, at least. 

A few more minutes and one last leisurely cover-to-cover flick through is all it takes, before _Gardener’s World_ is slotted back neatly into place, Zohara barely looking up from where she’s now perusing _Craft_ when the man finally does leave. To her credit, she doesn’t make an immediate beeline for the magazine, Zohara choosing instead take her own sweet time wandering the shelves a little, Bond having to constantly amble between stationary displays and gift cards to keep her in his line of sight. 

By the time Zohara deems it fit to circle back towards **Hobbies** and plucks _Gardener's World_ off the shelf, Bond finds himself inexplicably cradling an assortment of random purchases he had grabbed off the shelves, just to look like he has an actual, non-stalking related purpose for being in a bookstore.

In his hands, the following: One blue ink pen. A crossword puzzle booklet, difficulty level 8. One novelty mug that had been sitting innocently on the shelf along with other Scrabble-related paraphernalia, these evidently popular enough to warrant their own section. 

"And would you like a bag for all of that?"

"Yes, that would be lovely, ta."

_All in the name of the fitting in_ , Bond tells himself stubbornly as the cashier scans his purchases, and just as Zohara lays _Gardener's Monthly_ down on the far end of the counter, Bond's letter-tile mug goes into the waiting bag.

  


* * *

  


On most occasions, Bond is the kind of person who thinks things through in a rational, sensible manner. Split second decisions are often made as well, of course, but they too, always follow a logical sort of progress. 

Evade and then counter. 

Shoot before hiding. 

Run, duck, hide. 

Every action makes _sense_ , given the preceding reason, context, and possible outcomes, and Bond wouldn't have survived so long in the field if not for the instinctual ability to follow through on excellent life decisions.

Which is why at this point, Bond has absolutely no idea how or why he's sitting at his usual table in Q's cafe with a gift box at his elbow, waiting for the morning rush to subside and leave Q free for a moment. 

He could, of course, in the interest of future self-preservation, make no comment on the box and treat it like it was meant for anyone other than Q, but that in itself makes little sense at the moment. 

Why the avoidance? And on that note, why _not_ avoid to begin with? 

Why _anything_ , for that matter, when it comes to Q?

"Good holiday?" 

The sound of Q's voice cuts through Bond's miniature pseudo-existential crisis and Bond acts almost on autopilot, nudging the box towards Q's general direction. 

"Working holiday,” he says evenly as Q eyes the box with equal amounts of curiosity and trepidation, Bond trying to figure out how quickly he can come to terms with how it might not actually be common practice to buy one's baristas souvenirs, never mind how good the coffee is. “It wasn’t fantastic, granted, but still, it wasn’t all too bad.”

Q looks like he’s half a heartbeat away from picking the box up, held back only by the doubt of whether it’s really for him.

"You got me something,” he finally says in lieu of any action and it's a curious-sounding sentence, caught between the lilt of a question and the flat confines of an observation. The look on Q's face is decipherable enough though, thankfully, Bond feeling oddly pleased at having been able to tease a full-fledged smile out from the corner of Q's mouth. 

"No, Q," Bond sighs with feigned vexation. "I just _happened_ to come across this lovely gift-wrapped box on the table and it just _happened_ to have no owner, so it must be for you."

It’s not a large table by any means, and it’s only a matter of time before Bond’s incessant pushing of the box towards Q makes him pluck it from the edge, right before it ends up tumbling onto the floor. 

“It really is for you,” Bond adds as Q cradles the box gingerly. “In case you had any doubts about that.”

Q doesn't even bother dignifying that with a reply, too busy turning the gift over and over in his hands. There's an almost bird-like quality to his delight and even with sarcasm still sharp on his tongue, Bond can’t help but think, almost detachedly, of how fond he’s become of these little idiosyncrasies.

The way Q cocks his head as he studies the box with curious, happy movements. 

The way his hands handle it with only the most delicate care, fingers cradling the edges as if they could be sharp to hold.

"Can I open it?" he finally asks and Bond nods, Q depositing himself uninvited in the seat opposite Bond to unwrap his gift. 

“Don’t get your hopes too high,” Bond says in the most casual tone he can manage. “I’ve been told that Melbourne is just like London, except half as nice, so think of a nice mug you might have seen before and make it half as appealing.”

“And if this is actually the nicest mug I’ve seen?”

“Then I’d call you a gentleman and a liar.”

The sound of Q laughing is a rare, rare sound indeed, the Q that Bond has come to know being more accustomed to exasperated huffs and knowing smiles. Today though, in the late morning light and leaning back in his seat, holding a mug that Bond had carried halfway across the world at the bottom of his suitcase, Q laughs like it comes easy to him. 

Bond, in turn, hordes the moment with a jealousy that surprises even him.

  


* * *

  


The mug becomes a permanent fixture in the cafe, spending its days either in Q’s hands or drying on the rack with the other cups and plates. Its nights, Bond later finds out, are spent in a cupboard in Q’s flat.

“You bring it home with you?” Bond asks, slightly aghast and mostly amused by this revelation. 

“Is that a problem?”

This is the first time that Bond has stayed till closing, having sauntered in sometime after lunch with a file of overdue paperwork and a half-baked excuse about work-from-home policies. Unless they’re out of the country working missions, Mallory generally doesn’t care about what his double-ohs do or where they go for that matter, so here Bond is, taking an extended three hour lunch break as he watches Q pack up.

“It’s a problem if I’ve somehow inadvertently given you the only mug you own.”

“I have other mugs, I’ll have you know.” Zipping up the messenger bag that holds the mug in question, Q is unapologetic as ever, Bond shaking his head in faint disbelief. “I like drinking tea at home and I happen to like drinking tea out of _this_ mug, so it comes home with me.”

“Is that all you intend to bring home from the shop?”

The sentence is out of his mouth before Bond can even stop himself and in its wake, Bond is suddenly struck by two things: one, the fact that it might be too much too soon and two, the fact that he’s _worried_ that it might be too much too soon.

In the end though, it all comes to naught. Q just smiles one of those exasperated smiles that Bond likes to think he reserves for Bond alone, and goes to get the shop keys off their hook on the back wall.

“For today, yes,” he says. “Too much baggage otherwise.”

Oh _touché_. 

“Pity,” Bond says airily as he trails after Q and the chime above the door jingles when they step out into the street, Bond standing watch as Q hunches over the locks. “Maybe I should just get you another mug to keep at home. Save you all that trouble of having too much to carry.”

Hoisting his bag further up onto one shoulder, Q can only smirk, the corners of his mouth lifting. 

“That’s quite an idea, actually. A man can never have too many mugs.”

“Aha, so you _do_ only want me for my mugs.” Bond lets mock-disapproval creep into his voice, some unseen line already crossed and the both of them back in the clear with mutual mockery, as it would seem. “For shame, Q. For shame.”

In the fading light, Q looks like he’s on the verge of laughing, but the moment passes and there’s merely contentment shadowing his face, made warmer by the streetlamps casting their yellow glows.

“Don’t worry, I’m sure there’ll be someone out there who’ll want you for more than your mugs,” he says. And then: “Good evening, Mr. Bond.”

  


* * *

  


Because Bond doesn’t know the meaning of self-control, it doesn’t stop at mugs. 

His mission dossier is hardly at the state that it had been before Kandahar, but Mallory is slowly, surely, trying his damned best to change that or risk having Bond stalk through HQ while looking for new, ingenious ways to fill his time. There's only so much entertainment that corridors and closed office doors can provide, after all, and if Bond is overseas when he does finally decide to wreck some havoc, at least Mallory won't have to pick his way through the debris while coming into the office.

So it goes:

From the intelligence gathering operation in Vanuatu, Bond comes away with a wood carving of a gecko the size of his palm, speckled on the back with dark blue spots.

From renewing MI6 contacts in Hatyai, a small set of tea coasters made out of burnished metal, Thai pavilions etched into their surfaces.

And from baby-sitting the British ambassador to Austria while he meets with fellow diplomats in Salzburg, a medium-sized bag of _Mozartkugel_ , round balls of marzipan and nougat dipped in dark chocolate that Q falls upon like he’s been starving for days.

“You have a sweet tooth,” Bond observes with amusement when Q eats the fourth chocolate in a row. Leaning against his chair to watch Q shed just a little bit more decorum with each new piece of chocolate, Bond can feel the bruises on his back ache when they press against the rattan. 

It's a familiar kind of ache though, the kind that comes with tackling overenthusiastic potential security threats to the ground and the kind that reminds Bond of how he's not completely out of practice. 

"And you, with your globe-trotting ways, have a surprising penchant for souvenir hunting." Q carefully smoothens out the gold foil wrapper of the chocolate so that a colourful, if impassive rendering of Mozart stares up from the table. "These business trips of yours leave you a lot of time to explore tourist traps?"

"I try to make the time, between masked vigilantism and saving the world.”

Bond plucks a chocolate from the bag and unwraps it with less care, biting into it with only a smidgen of apprehension. Marzipan really isn’t his drug of choice, but given how Q seems to be popping these like bite-sized balls of crack, Bond has to admit – he’s curious. 

Also, it seems like a shame to have to hand-carried the damn things across 800 miles and not know what they taste like.

One bite in and Bond finds, to his chagrin, that it tastes absolutely _disgusting_.

Because Q is actually a sadistic bastard in disguise, he’s grinning at the face that Bond is making, Bond having to chase the medicinal taste of almonds down with a mouthful of lukewarm coffee lest he accost his tastebuds for another second. 

“Marzipan is quite an acquired taste, you know,” Q is saying with no pity at all as he eyes the barely touched remains of the chocolate, Bond having wisely chosen to take nothing more than a quarter with the edges of his teeth. 

He’s still sheltering from behind the comforting dark-roast scents of his coffee when he catches the look on Q’s face.

“Have at it if you want it,” he says and waves a hand at the chocolate. “God knows I’m never touching it ever again, even under pain of death.”

If Q lifts an inquisitive eyebrow at this, at least he follows it up immediately with the neat removal of Bond’s bad life decision, Q’s tongue flicking out briefly to catch a fleck of chocolate on his upper lip. 

_It was worth it_ , Bond thinks to himself as he watches the contentment spread on Q's face. _It was definitely worth it._

And as ridiculous as it may sound, the marzipan-flavoured misery from before is already fading from memory, having been replaced with the unspeakable urge to find out how he’s going to get more _Mozartkugel_ in London.

  


* * *

  


Three days before Bond is supposed to fly to Guilin for a joint operation, Q comes by Bond's usual spot with a paper bag in hand.

"Dare I open it?" Bond asks when Q deposits it on the table. In the midst of the cafe's late afternoon lull, Bond had been working with only the sounds of Q moving behind the counter for company, the gentle sound of running water and soft hiss of coffee machines being cleaned interspaced with cups clinking together.

"Fortune favours the brave, as they say."

"And this mysterious they, they're speaking from experience, I'll warrant? Had some prior training with cracking Trojan horses open and the like?"

"You have my guarantee that this will probably end marginally better than what happened with the Trojan horse."

" _Probably_ ," Bond echoes laughingly and he's already pulling the paper bag towards him, curiosity almost too much to bear.

A beat or two after Bond has peered into the opened bag, Q takes a seat across Bond. 

"You'll need to use it within ten days, preferably in seven," he says casually when Bond pulls out the small, airtight container of ground coffee. The handful of filters that Q had packed alongside it lie nestled at the bottom of the bag, Bond clearly more interested in reading the instructions that Q has written on the container label.

"The measurements are already there–,” Q continues on, “–but generally, this particular blend works best when it's two and half teaspoons to a cup. Pinch of sugar, no milk if you can help it."

"Is this a less than subtle way of saying you don't want to make my coffee anymore?"

Q shrugs in that non-committal way of his.

"That, or maybe it's because you mentioned that you'll be in China later this week, and I know for a fact that it takes a fair bit of effort to find good coffee there, depending on which city you'll be in."

"Looking out for my taste buds now, are you?" Bond puts the container back into the bag and decides that yes, he really is feeling more pleased than he thinks he should be over a large handful of ground coffee. "It's very much appreciated, thank you."

"Don’t thank me yet. As a matter of fact, I'm just making sure my hard work doesn't come undone in two weeks.” Throwing a knowing look towards Bond’s way, Q makes an encompassing gesture at the near-empty cup in front of Bond. “It's taken a while to train you to appreciate good coffee, so it'd be a crying shame for it to all go to waste, if you end up drinking instant mixes again."

At this, Bond can only shake his head, feigning horror.

"Such accusations, that you’re levelling against me. But then again, who knows what I might get up to all on my lonesome in China." Bond quirks a slightly devious smile at Q, who looks like he’s half a sentence away from rolling his eyes. "Maybe...–,” he adds slowly, “–maybe I'll even end up getting the measurements wrong."

"Which is why I wrote them out for you," Q points out sensibly. "They're _right_ there, see?"

“Yes, yes, and they’re very well written too, might I add. But you know how mistakes can happen, right?” The container carefully goes back into its bag and that done, Bond leans forward, voice dropped to sound conspiratorial. “Wouldn’t it be so much easier if you just came with me and handmade each cup instead?"

"Wouldn’t it be more polite to at least extend an offer of dinner before asking me to go traipsing across half of civilisation?” Q snipes back. “Also, manual work is expensive, so I’m expecting at least a ten-course degustation menu, at the bare minimum.”

It’s at this precise moment that the bell above the door jangles, a party of four scurrying in with slightly sheepish looks.

"We know it's almost closing time, but–" one of them is beginning to say and in response, Q just waves them in, rising from his seat as he does.

"So that's a yes to China?" Bond attempts.

"No," comes the flat reply. "But on that note, please read the instructions on my coffee, Bond. They’re there for a reason." 

And Q is gone, all polite smiles and expressive hands as he takes the last four orders of the day.

  


* * *

  


Guilin is shrouded in a light haze when Bond arrives, the lights of the city centre coming through soft and clouded in the wake of the dust that July's summer crowds bring with them. 

**East to West, Guilin scenery is the best!** proclaims a billboard that Bond's cab speeds past and maybe, if Bond had flown in at a time that had been slightly more decent than 3:42am, he could have made some kind of judgement on the limestone hills and lakes of the city. 

As it stands though, all Bond gets now is the riotous fluorescence of billboards in Mandarin and the looming shadow of mountains rising up in the distance, his cab driver cheerfully trying to make conversation with him despite the obvious language barrier.

"You...first time in China?"

"Many times, actually, but it's my first time in Guilin."

The toothy smile that flashes at him in the rear view mirror is one of delight.

"Travel? Business?"

"Business."

A knowing sound comes from the cabbie, who takes the momentary pause in the conversation as an opportunity to urge his car past a red light at the next intersection. There’s no real need to floor the pedal at this time of the night, though, the main roads have gone quiet with only the odd cab or two ferrying drunk tourists back to their hotels. This early, the hours are appropriate only for the end of late night sojourns or the start of early morning arrivals, and it’s when they’re cruising down one of the city’s wide, empty roads that the cabbie speaks up again.

"Guilin is good for making business," he says as his eyes flick from road to mirror to road again, watching Bond just as much as he's watching the road. "The outside, the air, all better than Shanghai or Beijing, so many people like coming. Tourist, working, all coming here."

"Good business for you?"

"Good, very good! All the time, many people, but still...still less than bigger city."

It's still a good two hours till first light and there's nothing to see outside beyond the blurred shapes of the buildings they're driving by, but with one hand steady on the wheel, the driver uses his other to wave expressively at whatever's outside his window. 

"Less people which means not so dirty. Clean and fresher," comes the accompanying commentary. "Make good place for thinking."

"I should do all my most important thinking here, then."

"Yea, yes." The laugh that the cabbie gives at this is a low one, more a brief chuckle than anything. "Thinking good so you do good business."

They've pulled up at the front of the Guilin Bravo Hotel, the entrance area and curved front of the building bathed in a warm, welcoming light. 

"You think good and careful while you here, okay?"

Bond looks up from where he's pulling his wallet out and the cabbie is grinning, smile only growing wider when Bond pays his 85 yuan cab fare with a 100 yuan note.

"Best business to you, sir," is the delighted response, cabbie tipping his head in thanks. "Best business."

"And to you."

A gust of exhaust and then there's only the red of the cab's tail lights speeding back out into the dark, a sleepy-eyed porter coming up to take Bond's bag for him. 

"Check-in this way, sir," he mumbles and Bond nods, the road-weariness already starting to creep up on him. 

Think good. Be careful. And most of all, best business.

Now that's a thought or two worth indulging in.

  


* * *

  


They're five days deep into the mission and seven hours from completion when things go to utter shit. 

One moment, Bond is listening to Li Ru feed him directions through the burner mobile he has against his ear and the next, there's the tell-tale pull of a hand fisted at the bottom half of his suit jacket, the lightest of pressures holding him back.

"A moment," he sighs to Li Ru and when he turns to look, there's a child tugging at him with one grimy hand, the other holding a bouquet of fake flowers that have clearly seen better days. "Let go, please."

"Ten yuan."

She does let go then, but when Bond shakes his head and starts to walk away, she pads after him, doggedly. 

"Ten yuan, mister. Ten yuan only."

"Look, I don't want any flowers, okay?"

On the phone, Li Ru is making impatient sounds, telling Bond to _walk away, god, just walk away, it's a scam, in a moment she's going to start screaming that you hit her and then you'd have gone and fucked our entire timeline over._

"Good flower, mister."

Ten yuan is barely one quid and Bond really, really doesn't have the time for this right now, so ten yuan it is, for a handful of dusty, plastic flowers, but-

"Bond?" 

Li Ru's voice is concerned when Bond gasps over the line, the sound underscored by a low "Fucking _hell_."

"Goddammit, Bond, what's happening?"

There's blood seeping through the dark material of his shirt, sweat already starting to bead on Bond's temple as he stumbles past an unawares couple and into a quieter sidelane.

"Stabbed," he grits out, now slumped against a wall of brick and with his jacket bunched up, pressed tightly against where the girl had knifed him. Of all the places, she just had to go right for the gut, wrenching the blade on the way out. "The girl, she's one of theirs. Fucking got me when I was reaching for my wallet."

Li Ru makes a frustrated _tch_ sound, following it up with a sigh. 

"We can't let them know you or the operation has been compromised, Bond. He’s going to run, if we don’t get him in the next half hour.”

"Chin already at the drop zone?" Given how much blood it’s soaking up, his suit jacket is already as good as ruined, Bond holding it against himself as he slowly eases his way onto the ground.

"No,” Li Ru says after a moment. “But I'll work something out, don’t worry. Stay put for the time being, I'll send a med evac your way."

"Between you and me–" A cough forces it's way out of Bond's throat and it makes him wince, when it comes out wet on the way out, "–lets just say that as of right now, I don't think I'll be going anywhere anytime soon"

"ETA ten minutes on that med evac. Listen, try not to die before evac gets to you, okay? MI6 will have my fucking head, if I send you back in a body bag." 

"Thank you, your concern for my wellbeing has been duly noted."

"I mean it,” Li Ru says tightly. There’s a pause as she snaps instructions in spitfire Mandarin to someone in the background, voice sharp as a razor’s edge. “Stay with me, Bond. I’m serious here, don't you dare go to sleep on me. Don't you fucking _dare_."

"That's what she said," comes the weak reply and Bond somehow still finds it in himself to grin, even as he tightens the grip he has on the phone.

The familiar taste of metal already starting to fill his mouth, the last thing he hears before the pain drags him under is the sound of Li Ru’s surprised laughter, made thin and shrill with nervousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...admittedly, I struggled a lot with this chapter and I'm pretty sure it shows D; Still, onwards!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Finally decided to grace us with your presence again, Mr. Bond?” he asks in Bond’s general direction just as Bond is making a beeline for his regular table. Q hasn’t even bothered to get up, too busy trying to manhandle a chicken-avocado on wholemeal into place. “And here I was thinking, that I had finally gotten rid of you.”
> 
> “Lies and slander,” Bond says cheerfully and if he sinks into his seat with a bit more care than usual, at least Q is too busy with sandwiches to notice. “Come off it, Q. I know you missed me while I was gone and not able to bless your cafe with my kind patronage.”
> 
> “Really?” Still from behind the counter, Q is in the midst shifting two salt-beef and rocket creations right the very front. “I think–," he says absently, "–that the word you might actually looking for is _terrorise_. Or perhaps beleaguer. Disturb. Harass, maybe? Pester?”

He can't remember, exactly, how they get him back to his room, but between the frantic clutch of hands that haul him into the backseat of a waiting car and the polite chime of the hotel's service elevator that spits them out onto the 17th floor, he makes it, somehow. Manages to catch bits and pieces of Li Ru’s gutter Cantonese too, some part of the way, the tone of her voice coming harsh as she barks orders at team members, at staff, at the mousy looking doctor who hovers over Bond for what feels like an eternity.

“Sorry,” he says as he lifts the blazer away from Bond’s wound. “Sorry, this is going to be very painful.”

And it is. It’s absolutely _agonising_ , in a way that’s both strangely immediate yet familiar, and if Kandahar had been about lulling resignations in the growing dark, then this is a searing, raging pain under the glare of artificial light, Bond clawing at the sheets as they try to keep his insides where they should belong.

“Talk to me,” he hisses at Li Ru who seems to be in the midst of yelling for someone to bring the morphine up. “Where are we with Chin?”

“Chin? You want to talk about Chin _now_?”

Bond’s face twists into a brief grimace of pain as the doctor holds his hand out for another wad of surgical cotton.

“No better time, honestly.”

When Li Ru mutters under her breath, it sounds like something considerably rude in Cantonese, a brief _diu chat nei_ before she consents. 

“Okay,” she sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. “Okay, if you must know, he made the drop point and Fan managed to pick up your slack, so as far as HQ is concerned, we’re still on target.”

“Word from HQ?”

“We're still well within the timeline. Not that any of this should matter to you, though, since…” Li Ru makes a vague gesture at the blood, coupling this with an attempt at nonchalance that looks more concerned than anything. “Well, this speaks for itself, doesn’t it?”

Bond can feel himself fading in and out of the conversation, not even alert enough to even notice when someone approaches him on his right. He does, however, tense when he feels the needle slide into his arm.

“Don’t worry too much,” he murmurs and there it is, _there’s_ the blessed tinge of drug-haze starting to float in his veins. “It’s just a flesh wound, isn’t it?”

  


* * *

  


The next time Li Ru fades into view, she has her hair pulled back from her face, severity of her features made sharper by the thin line she's pressed her lips into. 

“Hey,” he says hoarsely and the relief that crosses Li Ru’s face is genuine, even thankful in the right kind of light. “Told you not to worry, didn’t I?”

“Fuck off, Bond. No one did any worrying, even if you were out for all of two days.”

“And the timeline?”

“None of your business at the moment.” She’s pulled up a chair and if not for the garish decor on the room walls, Bond could almost pretend that he’s in a hospital suite, rather than a hotel room in the middle of Guilin. “Also, it’s going to _remain_ none of your business, since the doctor only gave you the all clear a few hours ago. Your mini would-be murderess was probably terrified out of her mind when she got to you, even if she made a mess of it, at least it’s a mess that missed all of your vitals.”

"Kids these days, right?"

The look of exasperation on Li Ru's face is almost like the one that Q wears, Bond blaming the fact that he's probably on the really good drugs to be able to think of his barista during a time like this. Then again, it's not like he can help it though, can he, when there's literally a line of morphine going in through the back of his hand.

"The good doctor thinks you're stable enough to be left on your lonesome for a few hours–” Li Ru continues on, “–but we’ve still taken the precaution of putting a security detail outside your door. Trust me, we’d stick you in a nice, sterile hospital ward if we could, but word on the street is there’s a price still floating on your head, so they’ll be combing the hospitals for a huge, ungainly _gwei lou_ like yourself.” 

She pauses, the brief, upward twist of her mouth softening her face for a fleeting moment when she smiles. 

“Which brings me to the best news I've heard all day, actually."

“MI6 finally managed to lure you over from the CIB?”

“Better. MI6 are footing the bill for all the bribes it took to get your medical equipment in here, so if you want to order room service on top of it all, I’d suggest that you best clear that with your own HQ first."

Bond wants to laugh, he really does, except it _hurts_ something awful when he does. 

"You're a charming woman, Ms. Li,” he says instead, grinning. “Absolutely charming."

"I do try my best, Mr. Bond." Li Ru rises then, and the sound of her heels are muted on the carpet as she makes her way towards the door. "Now get some sleep. This sting operation isn't going to run itself, and rest of us have actual work to get back to."

  


* * *

  


Later, disorientated and in pain, it’s to the metallic shake-rattle sound of water being boiled in the room's kettle that Bond wakes up to.

"The sting went okay?"

Nothing in reply, except a short, low hum that's mostly lost under the whistle of steam. At this, Bond just sinks further into his pillows and closes his eyes again, sighing a little. 

“Fine,” he says flatly, eyes still closed. “Be that way, if you want to.”

There wasn't anything much to see in the dark of the room anyways, Bond having only glimpsed the back of his visitor as he busied himself with the counter above the minibar. One of these days, Bond is going to have a word with Li Ru about recruiting skinny, flop-haired boys who look like they're better suited to receiving protection than giving it, but until then, Bond could hardly give a fuck.

“You know,” he adds drowsily when the smell of coffee starts to waft through the air, “If you were going to help yourself to my things, you could have at least made a cup for me too. Or asked, before you took some.”

It’s not as strong as the cups that Q brews at the cafe of course, but the smell alone is enough to make Bond ache for a sip, a taste, _anything_.

All that Bond gets, however, is the sound of a stirring spoon clinking against the side of a cup, the hushed whisper of feet walking over the carpet.

Considering the bounty still on his head, Bond knows he really should open his eyes at some point to look at the coffee-thief he's a addressing and make sure that whoever's in the room with him isn't actually one of Chin's lackeys sent to finish the job, but oh, it's just so much effort to even remember to breathe steadily, let alone open his eyes. 

In any case, if Chin wanted him dead, he'd already be dead by now, not wandering in and out of consciousness as he chides coffee-stealers. On that note, it also takes a very rare breed of assassin to make a cup of coffee in the midst of a job, so there's that as well, to consider.

"Technically speaking," says a voice that sounds like it's coming from too far away to be real. "It's really my coffee, not yours. But that’s just a technicality." 

A sigh, after that, and Bond is trying his hardest to fight his way back up to some semblance of being awake, because he knows this voice, he _knows_ it, as impossible as it may seem.

"I thought he was joking, when he first told me–," the voice continues on, "–but you know what? I'm not even surprised, to be honest.”

Bond wants to open his eyes, open his mouth, say or see something, anything at all. 

_What is this?_

"I mean, look at you. You’ve practically got trouble written all over you, among other things."

_Am I hallucinating?_

Try as Bond might to fight it, the dark still reaches up for him and swallows him up, pulling him down long before he can tether the thoughts down to actual words. 

_What are you **doing** here?_

"I don't even know what I was even expecting from the likes of you,” the voice says, more distant than ever now, and the last thing that Bond hears is a sigh, this one more fond than fed-up in its exasperation.

  


* * *

  


Bond drifts. In, out, through the better part of the week and eventually, into a blessed, hazy plateau, one where he can stay awake for more than a few minutes at a time if he really puts his back into it.

"It was touch and go some days, but surprise, surprise, here you are. Still holding on, stubborn as ever." 

It’s the morning of eighth day and Li Ru is perched at the edge of the room’s writing desk with her feet crossed at the ankles, her arms folded as she looks at Bond from across the room.

"Surprise," echoes Bond indifferently. It’s about as enthusiastic as the feelings he has for the shallow bowl of porridge in front of him, which is to say, not much at all. “I can’t believe you’re still keeping secrets, even now that you have Chin in custody.”

“Not me. Interrogation. You know how they are about privacy at such...delicate times.”

“Delicate. Is that what we’re calling torture, these days?” A snort and Bond pokes listlessly at something too lumpy to be identified. “Fine. If you’re not going to tell me anything useful, can you at least tell me how much coffee I have left?"

"...Excuse me?"

Bond gestures with his spoon towards the counter where all the complimentary beverage facilities are and all Li Ru does is arch an eyebrow at him.

"What am I, your in-house maid? You aren't even supposed to be drinking anything remotely like coffee for the next few days, anyways."

"Please, won’t you humour the invalid agent wounded in the face of duty?" The piece of fruit that Bond funds lurking at the bottom of his bowl looks too suspicious to pursue any further, Bond moving it to the side as he speaks. "Also, god be praised, you are definitely _not_ anything close to resembling my maid. You, Lieutenant Colonel Li, are a terrifyingly competent, intimidatingly intelligent-

"Shut it, Bond," she mutters to cut Bond off before he can go any further, but he must have said _something_ right, since she when she gets up, it’s to walk towards the counter instead of throttle him. "Please note that I’m only doing this because you almost died less than a week ago, okay?”

“Duly noted, thank you.”

If the container is dumped rather unceremoniously onto his lap, at least it's done with some measure of care, Bond appreciating the fact that Li Ru had actually tried her best to avoid aggravating the still-healing wound in his middle.

"Concerned that my staff have been dipping their fingers into your personal stash?" she asks curiously when Bond wrenches the lid off and peers expectantly into the container. The smell of ground beans is hardly as strong as it had been before, but it’s a strangely comforting scent all the same, rich and heavy with the barely discernible undertone of nougat beneath its body. 

Bond lingers half a moment longer than necessary, before shutting it again. 

"If I said yes–,” he finally says, considering, “–will that result in someone getting fired?"

"A promotion, more likely."

"What a crying shame."

Most days, Bond would actually consider himself a rather good judge of measurements and the like, but...now? He absently weighs the container in his palm, trying hard to remember how it had felt in his hands the last time he held it. 

Had it been heavier, perhaps? 

Exactly the same? 

"So?" There's a shade of concern colouring Li Ru's voice, Bond more than sure that it's coming from a place of worrying that he's been given maybe a bit too much of the good painkillers, rather than actual interest in whether her support staff has been poking around in his room. "Am I going to have to promote someone or what? I'm quite sure the only people who've been in your room are me and Zheng, though, and Zheng's always too busy with making sure you don't die, to actually sit down for a cup."

Bond sets the container down on the tray next to his bowl with care. 

"No,” he says at length and there’s an unnamed sense of disquiet unfurling inside his chest, tendrils digging into his ribcage. “No promotions needed at the moment." Container sitting beside his bowl, Bond taps the cover with a finger and looks up invitingly at Li Ru. "Fancy a cup, though? It's good, I promise."

Surprisingly, she literally shudders at the invitation, shaking her head as she does.

"Can't stand the taste of it, sorry.

The unease spools out a little more and when Bond picks the container up again under the guise of wanting to toy absently with it, he’s sure it feels just that much lighter than the last time he’d used it. 

He’s _sure_.

What he's not so sure of, however, is why.

  


* * *

  


So here's the funny thing about hallucinations: there is never, _ever_ , a point where they can be too strange. 

Bond has seen and sweated his way through a fair share of thoroughly disturbing things while drugged to the gills with whatever drug that's pulling him through that particular unhappy occasion, but this? Hallucinating his _barista_?

It's not as strange as it is...painfully pedestrian, which is paradoxically just a new level of strangeness in itself. 

_Maybe–,_ Bond thinks as he stares blankly up at the room ceiling, _–maybe it’s a sign of something._

Maybe he’s been in this cramped, god-forsaken hotel room for one week too many and it’s finally gone and done his head in, abstract watermarks on the ceiling not the kind of prolonged company that’s conducive for mental health.

Or maybe it’s some part of him that’s inexplicably wanting to go home for a while and remember what a comfortable familiarity feels like, the cafe on the corner the only constant that Bond cares about enough to matter.

Or maybe, and this is sounding more and more appealing as he mulls it over, maybe it’s just another stupid hallucination, made strange only in its blatant lack of inspiration.

Whatever it may be, Bond can feel his head ache a little, whenever he goes from contemplating the implications of each to contemplating the implications of even _wanting_ to contemplate implications to begin with, and if that isn’t some sort of cruel, drug-induced insanity, then he doesn’t know what it is.

“You’re thinking too much,” whispers a voice that sounds remarkably like Q’s in his head and in response, Bond just shuts his eyes against this newfound madness.

  


* * *

  


Bond knows that Chin has been broken when Li Ru finally gives her approval for him to go back, Bond chauffeured from base to base until he’s sitting in a military plane that’s due to fly out dark from Hong Kong. Sitting across him, the only seatmate he has for the journey is a fresh faced flight lieutenant.

“Rough few days?” he asks when Bond gingerly straps himself in and the distinct rise-fall of the lad’s heavy Scouse accent is almost painfully jarring, after a month of nothing but Chinese-accented English. 

“Rough month, more like.” 

Courtesy of Zheng’s well-intentioned attempt to make Bond’s departure as comfortable as possible, Bond’s head feels like it’s been stuffed pleasantly with cotton, and his hands, replaced with great, lumbering paws that require concentrated effort to use with any measure of efficiency. Case in point, it takes one and a half bloody tries for the damned seat belt to click into place.

“Bet you’re right keen to be on the way back home, aren’t you sir?” Someone out there must have taught the boy some excellent manners because even if he’d paused for the briefest of moments, at least he’d hardly glanced at how Bond’s hands have been fumbling with an artificial slowness. “I’ve been out here three months now and it’s nice enough, it is, but it ain’t home, y’know?”

Entirely unbidden, Bond finds himself thinking of the smell of coffee, and when the realisation dawns that home shouldn’t look like a smile in the late afternoon sun or smell like a dark, Salvadoran roast lingering in the warmth of a cafe’s air, it’s already too late. The thought is there. The idea has rooted.

“It isn’t,” Bond says after a beat and if it sounds a little tight, then Bond has painkillers he can blame for that. “It really, really isn’t.”

  


* * *

  


When Bond steps into the cafe for what feels like the first time in far, far too long, Q is kneeling behind the counter to put a new batch of sandwiches into the display case.

“Finally decided to grace us with your presence again, Mr. Bond?” he asks in Bond’s general direction just as Bond is making a beeline for his regular table. Q hasn’t even bothered to get up, too busy trying to manhandle a chicken-avocado on wholemeal into place. “And here I was thinking, that I had finally gotten rid of you.”

“Lies and slander,” Bond says cheerfully and if he sinks into his seat with a bit more care than usual, at least Q is too busy with sandwiches to notice. “Come off it, Q. I know you missed me while I was gone and not able to bless your cafe with my kind patronage.”

“Really?” Still from behind the counter, Q is in the midst of shifting two salt-beef and rocket creations right to the very front. “I think–," he says absently, "–that the word you might actually be looking for is _terrorise_. Or perhaps beleaguer. Disturb. Harass, maybe? Pester?”

“Now you’re just using your very impressive vocabulary to avoid giving me an honest answer.”

A half-snort and Q slides the glass door back shut, straightening so that Bond can actually look at him full in the face for the first time since Bond had stepped through the doors. 

So maybe Bond might have been expecting some kind of earth-shaking revelation, after clawing his way back from certain death, but strangely (or perhaps, not too strangely at all), here Q is, still. Hair unruly as always and name tag just a bit askew on his shirt, having to pull his plastic food-safety gloves off his hands so he can push his glasses back up his nose again.

Isn’t there a rule of some kind, about things having to be different when you’ve managed to cheat death? Something about newfound appreciations and a thirst for living, or something along those lines?

Bond should have known from the start that he never plays by the rules, though. Instead, the smile that greets him when Q looks his way is the exact same one that had seen him off when he’d left, and really, feeling that now frighteningly familiar warmth spread in his chest, Bond doesn’t think he’d want to have it any other way.

“I like how you didn’t exactly attempt to correct me when I said terrorise or any of its suitable replacements,” Q says as he turns his attention to putting empty containers in the sink and used Glad-Wrap in the bin. 

"And I, in turn, like how you're evidently still avoiding giving me a straight answer." 

When Q gives in and lets out a groan groans, Bond has to resist the urge to preen a little at having managed to get such a response in so little time.

“One month away,” Q is bemoaning even as he pulls a clean cup from where it had been drying on the rack. “One entire month and then some, and I actually had the naievity to think that I was finally rid of you.”

“And yet here I am,” comes the smug affirmation. “You can’t expect to get rid of me that easily now, honestly. Also…” Bond leans back in his chair and the rattan backing creaks under his weight, Bond watching with a detached interest as Q goes through the motions of measuring out his grind of choice. “So you _do_ admit to keeping track of how long I’ve been gone?”

The huff that escapes Q is one of amusement, the smile that accompanies it after maybe even indulgent if Bond cared to read that deeply into it. 

“Please," Q says with a touch of long suffering. "If believing that is what helps you sleep at night, I'll have you know that I only keep track to remind myself of the small blessings in life.”

By now, Q has gotten the espresso machine started, pressing buttons and pulling levers until the air is humming with the sound of familiar whirrs. Bond knows he’s missed this, but it’s not until the smell of fresh coffee being made lifts on the air that he realises just how much.

And of course, it goes without saying that when Bond says _this_ , he’s actually referring to the wonderful amalgamation of good coffee and even better banter.

Maybe.

Probably. 

It’s an utter, irrevocable farce in the end, but at least, Bond did resolutely _try_ not to think about the man who provides him with both.

  


* * *

  


“La Serrania, today,” says Q with a flourish when he sets the finished product down in front of Bond. “A Colombian roast with a candied orange note and a crisp, red apple undertone, toffee finish to follow.”

“Is this a welcome back present?” This close, he can practically smell the fruit accents, a sweetness that's shot through with darker, more heavy shades. If Bond was a lesser man, he would cry, really, he’s been craving a decent cup of coffee that badly. "The trip back here almost killed me, you know."

"Am I supposed to be impressed by your survival skills, Bond? And no, this isn't a welcome back present because the word present implies not having to pay." Q smirks and has the audacity to even hold his hand out for services rendered. "That'll be £2.50 as usual, thank you."

“What, not even a welcome-back discount?”

“Did I say £2.50? Terribly sorry, my mistake. I think I meant £3.50."

The shake of Bond’s head is woeful, but when Q doesn’t budge, Bond finally consents to pull a five pound note out of his wallet, taking care to casually pluck the small, embroidered bookmark from inside his wallet’s card organiser as well. 

“I’d appreciate having the change back–,” says Bond with an air of flippancy that he doesn’t really feel as he deposits both in Q’s hand, "–but if you'd like to, you're more than welcome to keep the rest."

There had been plans for something a little more elaborate, but in the precious few minutes he had to spare in the midst of recon in the marketplace, this had been all he could convince a crabby old seller to part with for the handful of spare yuan he had in his pocket. Standing amongst Chinese pines, a white crane looks almost inquisitively out from the threads that piece it together.

"You're positively the opposite of magpie-like, you know that?” As Q closes his hand over both payment and gift, there’s unrestrained delight on his face. “Bringing me trinkets and things like this instead of stealing them. Or is this a more feline instinct, like leaving dead mice at someone’s door?" 

"I think cats only do that because they’re concerned humans can’t hunt for themselves. But..." Leaning across the table, Bond drops his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "You know, I’ve also heard that sometimes they do it because they seek attention and approval. Some strange quirk of the predator instinct and all that.”

“Oh, really?” His voice is desert-dry, but Q’s smiling, toying a little with the small tassel at the top of the bookmark as he speaks. “You might want to consider working on that predator instinct though, before anything. If you managed to almost die on that trip of yours, that doesn’t really bode well for any kind of instinct beyond that of blind stupidity.”

"Thank you for your concern, I’ll make a note about that. Anything you might want to add on to the bit about the attention and approval?

At this, Q just makes a thoughtful sound, walking away with the bookmark dangling between his fingers as he does, and when he returns later, it’s with £2.50 in coins along with a sea-salt caramel slice from the food display.

“I do have a thing to add to that bit,” he says lightly as he sets the plate down in front of Bond. “It’s hardly an unusual request, but next time around, may I suggest that you try your best _not_ to die?” Q hands Bond a dessert fork and the undecipherable look on his face might just be a trick of shadow and light. “Because even if dying might actually be an assured way of getting my attention, Bond, I don’t think I’ll approve too highly of it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [so about that white crane...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crane_in_Chinese_mythology)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While to his credit, Q doesn’t quite roll his eyes, the sentiment still comes across loud and clear.
> 
> “Be careful with all that thinking you’re doing, Bond. There's a distinct possibility that you might strain yourself in the process.Though...-" He trails off, as if the comment hadn't already been perched on his tongue right from the very start. "I’m sure, if you do strain that head of yours and end up having to rely more than usual on the other one to make your decisions for you, I’d be hard pressed to tell the difference.”
> 
> Q smiles then, sweet enough to be anything but, and Bond is _impressed_ , he really is. He’d like to tell Q just as much too, except instinct overrides intent and what comes out is:
> 
> “Is it just me or did you actually get meaner, since the last time I came here?”

The wound in Bond's stomach heals over, as wounds tend to do, and by the time Q hands him a new container of coffee for his trip to Berlin, the new skin is stretched pink and taut, just starting to itch at the edges.

"It's a much lighter roast than what I've been serving, lately–" Q is saying as he pulls a handful of filters from the cupboard behind the counter, "–but it's worth a try, especially when you get that hint of pineapple on the first sip."

"...Pineapple?" 

There’d been undertones of cherries and stone fruits before this, short jaunts to Rouen and Brussels made more bearable with the taste of single-origin blends in his hotel mugs, but this? Bond eyes the container skeptically, unsure about how he feels about pineapple in his coffee.

"Really? _Pineapple_?" he tries again, just to make sure.

"Pineapple, wine, and cola, actually."

When Bond still looks unconvinced, Q just goes back to packing fresh filters into the paper bag that already holds the coffee-container, pushing it over the counter when he's done.

"Have I ever led you wrong when it comes to coffee?" he demands. One hand on the bag, he pats it to make his point. “Almost eight months now and has there ever been a cup you didn’t like?”

"Well I don't know, really, since I haven't tried this Burundi Mubga concoction you've so kindly foisted onto me."

"Mubuga," corrects Q. "Burundi _Mubuga_. And if you'd rather not have–"

Bond hurriedly moves the bag out of Q's grasp, cradling it against him like its something precious. 

"I'd rather have, thank you. My German isn't that up to par, to order anything beyond the usual day old swill they give tourists."

The smug look that Q wears shouldn't be as endearing as it is, but Bond has since learnt to not scrutinise his own observations about Q too closely these days. Down that way lies madness, surely, if not an unpleasant confrontation with things that Bond would rather not confront. 

Whatever foundation it is that they've built this strange barter-trade on, Bond doesn’t really care to know what it’s made of, just as long as there’s the assurance that it won’t fall apart anytime soon. If it exists, then that’s enough for now. Bond has no interest whatsoever in finding out how or why or even when it came to be, nevermind what else can be possibly built upon it.

So what if he doesn’t know how he’s managed to somehow cultivate one of the most normal relationships he's had in years, or why said relationship has to be with one sharp-eyed, quick-witted barista.

And so what if he’s not sure when he's come to think of this nameless cafe and single-letter man as something scarily similar to what some people might call the feeling of home, each time London sends him out and calls him back again.

Bond doesn’t care to know the answers to these things.

He really doesn’t

"Bond?" Feeling as if his sanity is spiraling just a little further from him, Bond looks up from the paper to look at Q, the latter watching him with his head tilted a few degrees to the side in question. “Everything okay?”

It's near closing time and in the hushed quiet of the end of the day, late afternoon sun lighting the tips of Q's hair with warmth, Bond has to wonder for the first time in his life if this is what people feel, whenever they say they have something worth coming home for. 

Because if Bond had never cared about having his bones in an unmarked grave across the water, he thinks he might care that much more now, just enough to make that extra bit of effort to come home safe.

"I probably need to get going soon," Bond says, and it's not a diversionary tactic, it’s just the truth. He really does need to get on a plane to the continent in less than three hours. "Is there anything you'd like from Berlin?"

"Why, are you actually taking orders now?" Palm cradling the elbow of his other arm, Q taps a finger against this chin, thinking. 

"If...,” he finally says at length, “If I said I wanted a piece of the Brandenburg Gate? And to be more specific, if I said I wanted a piece that comes with the Quadriga at the top?

"Then I'd commend your frankly quite Napoleonic tastes and regretfully inform you that the Germans might not take kindly to having it stolen from them again." Bond lifts his coat off the back of his chair and shrugs it on against the ensuing chill that will be waiting for him on the outside. "Besides, I don't think a piece like that would fit in your shop, anyways."

"True,” Q concedes. “But then again, don't underestimate what some creative rearrangement can do for a place."

As he turns up his collar to keep the wind chill out, Bond can’t help but laugh at the image.

"I'll see what I can do, then,” he says. “But still, no promises.”

"None made, don’t worry.” When Q smiles, there’s a teasing edge to it. “I’ll see you soon, Bond,” he adds. “And hopefully with my Quadriga in tow as well.”

The bell above the door rings as Bond lets himself out, and looking back through the glass at Q who has come after him to hang the **closed** sign out on the door, Bond feels the realisation hit him like cold air filling his lungs.

_Oh god_ he thinks to himself as his feet hit the pavement. 

_I think I might be in love with him._

  


* * *

  


Because Bond isn’t a sadist and can actually compartmentalise like the best of them, he doesn't mull _too_ much over the notion. 

Of course, there’s the occasional thought or two that knocks around in his head as he flies from Heathrow to Tegel, but those are shut down easily enough, Bond perusing the print-outs in his dossier with renewed interest. 

As for the minor realisations that try to make themselves heard as he checks into his hotel in Kreuzberg, those are dealt with swiftly as well, Bond telling himself that he doesn’t have the time to hear each and every one of them when he has to get to Mitte in time for the check-in with his local liaison. 

Bond should have known as well as anyone, though, that avoidance is only temporary at best, and hardly the best tactic when it comes to running from something.

Had he _really_ not managed to notice it creeping up on him this entire time? 

Was he even supposed to have noticed to begin with?

Smoking on a street corner and waiting for Ansell to show, Bond belatedly finds that he’s suddenly being confronted by the increasing awareness of just how utterly bewildering this entire business can be, the stark reality of the situation only really starting to make itself known now that Bond is forced to acknowledge the facts. Thus far, they’ve only managed to resolve themselves into two distinct trains of thought:

One, that he might actually be in love with his barista, and two, that through the improbability of one working out, Bond might actually be quite irrevocably, maybe even irreversibly _fucked_.

All very encouraging stuff, really, so when Bond spots Ansell exiting a nearby bar with a pack of cigarettes in hand, it’s with a palpable relief that he packs the thoughts up and stows them away again.

"Mr. Bond,” Ansell says in greeting as he saunters over to borrow Bond’s lighter. “Looking good, for someone who had a run in with the wrong end of a blade in Guilin.”

"There’s a right end you can run into?”

With a dry smile, Bond passes his lighter over and Ansell winks his thanks, clicking it until a tiny flame flares to life.

"The non-pointy part, probably,” he says, flippant. Bending over the fragile warmth, Ansell waits for the end of his cigarette to catch alight, and when it does, he takes a deep drag.

"Well then," he says after that first long exhale. "Nice catching up and all, but shall we get down to it, double-oh seven?" 

The smoke curling into the damp air makes it bitter to breathe in, but Ansell doesn’t seem to mind, if long, frequent pulls of his cigarette are anything to go by.

“Not that there’s anything particularly complicated that we need to run over for wet-work, of course,” he adds, after a thought. “But you do know how Six likes us to at least try our hand at doing things by the book, once in a while.”

“Once in a while clearly being the operative word here, right?”

Ansell snorts, flicking ash into the dark.

“Clearly,” he echoes. “So shall we, Mr. Bond?”

"Please." Bond drops the stub of his cigarette under his heel and grinds it into the pavement just as a helpful voice in the back of Bond’s head reminds him that blood and coffee don’t stain in quite the same way. “Do share.”

  


* * *

  


For services rendered, Bond offers Ansell a cup of coffee when he comes up to Bond’s hotel room the evening after, the sweet-tart smell of Q's Burundi blend already starting to fill the air when Ansell commanders the one-seater by the window.

"Instant mixes not good enough for you, these days?" He'd brought along the item just like Bond had asked and it sits atop Bond's mission dossier on the writing desk now, inconspicuous in its cardboard casing. "Since when did _you_ become a coffee snob?"

In reply, Bond just passes Ansell the cup he had made, watching with interest as Ansell's first, tentative sip turns quickly into an entire mouthful. 

" _Mein gott_ ," he mutters appreciatively into his cup after he has swallowed and Bond can't help but smirk even as he makes his way towards the table. "What's in this, crack cocaine?"

"Single origin bourbon washed beans," comes the absent reply as Bond lifts the box lid with care. "Lightly roasted." 

Any other day, Bond would have briefly considered trying to dredge up whatever else Q had told him about the blend, but for now, he's just a bit too preoccupied by the miniature replica of the Brandenburg Gate that's staring up at him from its nest of tissue paper, polished silver stark against the white of its bedding. 

With a small hint of pleasure, Bond notes that it even comes with a delicately rendered Quadriga at the top.

"Is this what you had in mind?” Ansell asks from where he’s hunched over his coffee and holding the cup like it’s made of solid gold. “Because if it isn't, I'm going to need another cup of this as a security deposit before I go traipsing through the tourist traps again. Actually, make that two cups, if there's rain on the forecast. Do you even _know_ how difficult it was, exactly, to dig this up from the depths of kitschy mass production?"

“Well I clearly don’t, I didn’t do any traipsing and digging.” Bond closes the lid then and sets the box aside, turning to face Ansell. “Neither did you, for that matter. You went and delegated this to some hapless intern, didn’t you?” 

Ansell just raises his cup in sober acknowledgement.

“Guilty as charged,” he says with good humour. “At least now they have something else to put on their CV, besides data-entry and the like. Souvenier hunting for queen and country, perhaps? Personal shopping for a double-oh’s eccentric tastes?”

Bond doesn't bother to correct him and Ansell just laughs, tipping the rest of the coffee into his mouth.

  


* * *

  


Three hours after his bullet finds its way into someone's head and five hours before he's due to fly back to London, Bond is compromised. 

Or at least, that's the word he thinks he'll have to use in the upcoming debrief sessions, since as far as he knows, Six doesn't yet have a word to describe situations such as these. 

"What is it that you need now?" Ansell sighs the moment the call connects and Bond is using his shoulder to hold the burner mobile against his ear, hands otherwise preoccupied with rifling idly through a dead man's pockets. "A piece of the Berlin Wall, maybe? Bundeskanzlerin Merkel's personal number?"

"Nothing quite so complicated this time, don't worry."

As he pats down the silk lining of the man's suit blazer, Bond thinks about how unsurprising it is that there's absolutely nothing to identify whoever it is that's currently lying dead on the carpet of his hotel room. No keys, no mobile, not even a wallet, which makes this just about as professional as they come.

Bond sits back on his haunches with a small sigh of resignation.

"Was that a sigh I heard, Bond?" On the phone, Ansell's voice has gone that much more apprehensive, Bond feeling vaguely sorry for having to put the man through this at 2am on a Thursday morning. 

Then again, Ansell _had_ been the one to request Bond's services here, so at this point, they're probably even now, in terms of inconveniencing each other.

"It's bad, isn't it," Ansell continues on when Bond doesn't answer right away. "Whatever it is you're calling for, I'm assuming it's bad."

"You do know that constant negativity is bad for the soul, right?"

" _You_ are bad for my soul, Bond. You. Now for fuck's sake, either tell me what you called me for or I'm hanging up and going back to sleep."

Because Ansell has no qualms about doing exactly what he says, Bond does tell him, then, and for a moment, there's only silence on the line, Ansell gone pointedly quiet in the face of Bond's request. 

" _Scheiße_ ," he finally says when the seconds have stretched on long enough. Bond knows enough German to echo the sentiment with similar, if not stronger feelings. "Fucking hell. Indulge me for a moment, but I need to ask: there isn't a chance that you might actually be drunk off your face right now and playing some kind of bad prank, is there?"

Bond casts a sideways glance at the body. Rigor mortis hasn't begun to set in yet, but there's a telltale unnatural stillness to the limbs, chest too inert for anything other than death.

"I'm afraid not, no."

The next time Ansell swears again, it's longer and lower in register, a string of German that's punctuated with a select few _fuck_ s for good measure. 

"Alright then," he sighs when he's done and Bond can just imagine him with his fingers pressed against his temple, probably hunched over as he sits on the side of his bed. "Alright. I'll get a crew to you in thirty, but in the meantime, just...sit tight, okay? And watch your door. I'll be there with cleanup."

  


* * *

  


There's not much to do while he waits, so Bond just ends up making another cup of coffee and half-heartedly packing for his flight, even as he resolutely tries and fails to ignore the body that's cooling on the carpet. 

It's not like Bond hasn't done far more under considerably worse circumstances, but there's still a certain...inconvenience, that comes with having to use the edge of his shoe to nudge one slowly stiffening hand out of his way while he walks over to the writing desk.

As minimalist as Bond's needs are when he travels for work, there're still a number of items that need to be retrieved from where they're currently strewn a little haphazardly across the glass surface of the desk: 

Crumpled receipts, emptied from his pockets. 

The charger for his mobile, wire wrapped neatly around its body. 

A series of standard issue cover files that someone far, far down the chain of command had thoughtfully filled with fake spreadsheets and the like, some of them even coming with highlighted PowerPoint printouts.

One quick, cursory survey shows that most of it is in place, and Bond is ready to sweep all the personal and MI6-provided miscellany that travels with him into his bag, except–

Except most does not mean _all_ , which sends something uncomfortable prickling down the back of Bond's neck.

He hadn’t noticed it immediately, but now that he really looks, the box that holds the miniature replica of the Brandenburg Gate is sitting on the wrong end of the table when Bond picks it up. 

Unopened and it's contents seemingly undisturbed, Bond knows it's easier to blame the placement on some unfortunate trick of misremembering, or chalk it up to his own mistaken memory, but here's the thing, though: Bond remembers where he'd put it. 

Bond remembers _distinctly_ , how he'd left the box lying on top of his folders like a glorified paperweight of sorts and here it is now, having migrated across the length of the table to sit under the desk lamp instead.

How...disconcertingly strange, though not entirely impossible, since his unlucky visitor could have been fiddling with the box while he waited for Bond to come back. 

Does it make sense, though, for him to only pick up the clearly marked tourist paraphernalia while leaving folders and files untouched? Or had he flipped through those as well, gone through the discarded receipts while he was at it?

Bond looks down at the miniature Gate still lying safe and sound in its tissue-bed, finely-wrought metal catching the artificial lamplight of his room when Bond holds it up for a closer inspection. Not even a fingerprint. 

_Good,_ Bond thinks, though this is quickly followed up with _But that doesn't change the fact that none of this actually makes sense_. 

If he'd moved the box, why leave everything else in place? 

There's nothing, absolutely nothing else in Bond's room that's out of place, so why this one thing?

Bond casts a questioning look at the body on his floor.

Curiouser and curiouser indeed, but there's no time to ponder the fledgling mystery at the moment, though, not when the mobile in Bond's front pocket is starting to buzz just as two polite raps sound from outside Bond's hotel room door.

"Knock knock," Ansell croons when Bond accepts the call. "Housekeeping, at your service. I hope you have coffee for me, double-oh seven, you know how I _hate_ to do house calls at nearly three in the fucking morning."

Tucking the box into the inside of his jacket and with his speculations weighing just a tad more uncomfortable than how the sharp edges of the box keep digging into his side, Bond goes to let Ansell in.

Maybe it was just a quirk of personality, to have gone for the tourist trinket above all else.

Maybe it was an idiosyncrasy that was as ridiculous as it was strange, though not entirely impossible.

Or maybe, Bond thinks grimly as Ansell brushes past him with a low whistle on his lips (" _Mein gott_ , you agents just attract trouble like a shit attracts flies, don't you?") he just needs to stop questioning, stop trying to read so much into so little.

  


* * *

  


Because Ansell is more than competent at what he does, Bond gets on his seven am flight with little fanfare and by the time he lands, MI6 has received a detailed, if slightly puzzling coroner's report from Berlin.

"A heart attack," Bond repeats flatly when he meets Mallory at the relatively sane hour of 11:30am. "The man that was supposed to shoot me the moment I walked through my door died of a _heart attack_?"

"Incredibly pedestrian, I know, but accidents do happen in the field."

Mallory looks more grimly amused than concerned though, at the moment. The matter of Bond's secure location being compromised will have to be addressed at some point, but at this stage, Bond doesn't know if he's awake enough to even comment coherently on the whole affair, let alone analyse it from the inside out for their operations team. 

With it having been almost two days since Bond has slept anything more than three hours in a row on a flat surface, Bond is honestly starting to wonder if he hadn't somehow hallucinated the entire thing from start to end, from dead body to mysteriously moving box. If he had, though, then that would entail the rather unfortunate event of Bond still hallucinating at this very moment, given how Mallory seems intent on picking Bond’s encounter with the body from every possible angle. 

Was he already dead when Bond walked in? Was Bond _sure_? Absolutely? 

Given his previous experiences with hallucinations, Bond wouldn’t even count it as a major surprise if Q ended up making a cameo appearance again today. Hell, Bond would welcome it, if only to have something to focus on besides the heaviness of his eyelids and the drone of Mallory’s voice. 

Life, though, is ever full of disappointments, and when Bond tries not to seem like he's stumbling out of Mallory's office an hour later, all that greets him is Moneypenny sitting at her desk, one eyebrow raised at his haggardness.

  


* * *

  


Due to having more than enough experience with the cruel combination of sleep deprivation and jet-lag, Bond knows better than to go to bed at one in the afternoon. 

It’s not like he doesn’t have a clutch of sleeping pills stashed away somewhere that could instantly help with the problem, but as it goes, workplace-typical paranoia has helped Bond build a deep mistrust of them, the artificial haze of sleep too hard to break out of should he ever need to.

So cold showers it is, for the time being, Bond standing under the freezing spray and hating himself a little more for every second that he’s there. And after that, when the travel dust and airport grime is gone, measured walks around the bare confines of his flat, Bond making it to a grand total of ten laps before he sinks onto the couch, bored and tired.

_Don’t go to sleep yet,_ he tells himself sternly. _Just another few hours._

In the end, Bond would have preferred to blame the fact that the consumption of caffeine is a staple for staying awake, but honestly, who is he even trying to kid? 

If he’s going over to Q’s, coffee hasn’t been the sole reason to his visits for a long, long time.

  


* * *

  


"I feel terrible," Bond says by means of greeting when he drops into his usual seat and Q just gives him a mostly amused look, coming over to lean ever so slightly against the opposite end of Bond's table. With five other customers still lingering over their sandwich-lunches in the shop, Q can't afford to sit down like he usually does, though he does make it clear that he's here for something a bit longer than the standard hello.

"Would it be rude to say that you look terrible?” he wonders out loud in reply. “Or would it actually be ruder to lie and say otherwise?”

“Pressing questions I have no answer to, I’m afraid.”

If up till this point, Bond had fought _hard_ not to have his eyes close out of their own accord, it’s at least with some semblance of grace that he loses his battle with yawning, Bond needing to mask the sight and sound of his exhaustion behind one quickly lifted hand. 

“Sorry,” he murmurs, hoping that he’d managed to hide the worst of it. “Didn’t get to sleep much.”

Apparently he didn’t, though, since Q only graces Bond’s excuse with a raised eyebrow before he disappears to his usual place behind the counter, reappearing only a short while after with what Bond sincerely hopes is a cup of today’s brew.

“You know–,” Q says when he carefully sets the cup down, “–most customers who look like they’re in dire need of sleep will actually go and get some, instead of coming in looking for coffee.”

“Ah, but if I wasn’t strictly looking just for coffee?” Pulling the cup towards him, Bond wraps one hand around its side, the earthenware comfortingly warm from what he’s slowly realising is distinctively... _not_ coffee.

“Q–,” he starts a little pleadingly, but because Q is a terrible, terrible man, he just shakes his head, the look on his face barely a few degrees short of devious. 

“You did just say you weren’t strictly looking just for coffee," points out Q with an air of sound reasoning. "So here it is. I brought you something that's not coffee."

“But I didn’t say that I wanted _tea_.”

In reply, Q just waves the comment away as if it’s just a mild annoyance, rather than a legitimate complaint.

“Semantics,” he says blithely. “You’ll thank me, later. I know what a broken body clock looks like, Bond, and in all seriousness, the last thing you need right now is more caffeine in your system.”

Eying the concoction in his cup with what can only be described as trepidation, Bond finally does relent and pick the offending item up, even consenting to take a sip after a while.

“Chamomile,” Q offers when Bond makes a face at the herbal taste of it. “Helps with sleep.”

“Which I’m actively trying to _avoid_ right now, if you don’t mind.”

“If I had deigned to give you coffee, you'd probably end up sleeping at some ungodly hour again and then where would we be then, hmm?”

To Bond’s credit, he _did_ go through sleep deprivation training after being recruited, so it doesn’t take that much effort to wear a grin and run (or perhaps stumble, given the current circumstances) with the opening he’s been given.

“We?” Bond echoes, looking far more innocent than he sounds. “If we were up at some ungodly hour, I think I actually do know of a good number of places we could be, along with the things we could be doing.”

While to his credit, Q doesn’t quite roll his eyes, the sentiment still comes across loud and clear.

“Be careful with all that thinking you’re doing, Bond. There's a distinct possibility that you might strain yourself in the process.Though...-" He trails off, as if the comment hadn't already been perched on his tongue right from the very start. "I’m sure, if you do strain that head of yours and end up having to rely more than usual on the other one to make your decisions for you, I’d be hard pressed to tell the difference.”

Q smiles then, sweet enough to be anything but, and Bond is _impressed_ , he really is. He’d like to tell Q just as much too, except instinct overrides intent and what comes out is:

“Is it just me or did you actually get meaner, since the last time I came here?” 

“I’m always mean, Bond." In the wake of one table’s departure out the doors, there’s a new mess for Q to clear and clean, Q already starting to straighten from where he’d been resting his hip against the side of Bond’s table. “And if you hadn't noticed, then maybe it's just a sign that I should start being meaner towards you in future."

"My, my, holding back on me now, are you Q? Is that favouritism I'm detecting?"

The corners of Q's mouth twitch at this, almost as if Q is actively trying to fight down a smile. 

"I can neither confirm or deny," comes the diplomatic answer and Q, being Q has to ruin it by following it up with a "Though most days, I do find myself wondering how much of it is actually the result of mild Stockholm syndrome."

" _Q_ ," Bond chides. "To even insinuate that I, a valued and model customer of your fine establishment, am forcing you to like me against your will?"

Bond’s put-on look of hurt pride does nothing for Q, who just lifts his head and actually looks more pleased with himself, if anything.

"Valued? Is that the term we use nowadays to describe infestations?"

"This infestation happens to bring you presents that you enjoy, I'll have you know. Presents and compliments. Tidings of joy."

Again, with the eye roll that’s not quite an eye roll, Q shaking his head at Bond with a sigh. 

“Just finish your tea, Bond," he says as he pushes off from Bond's table. Another customer has just gotten up to leave as well, and now Q has two unclean places to see to. "And I know it must be hard, but please try to refrain from sleeping at the table if you can. Seeing you keeled over like that might be distressing to the rest of the actual customers I have.”

  


* * *

  


Slouched against the seat of his chair, Bond lets the warm, familiar sounds of the cafe wash over him, a blur of background noise that's just enough to keep him awake while he tries to peruse one of the newspapers that Q always has scattered somewhere around the shop. 

Call him old-fashioned, but on most days, Bond finds that he does actually enjoy flicking through printed pages, skimming the local news and lingering over op-ed pieces as he goes. 

If he's feeling particularly masochistic, he might even cast a cursory glance at the league tables to see how Liverpool are floundering this season, but today, not even the most biting letter to the Editor can keep his attention for more than a few minutes, Bond finding that his sleep-addled brain is drawn more to the spaces between the lines than to the actual sentences themselves.

In the middle of a headline on the NHS, Bond's thoughts drift towards the box that's currently hidden inside his coat pocket, time not yet right for it to make it's inevitable appearance. 

Trying to read through a paragraph on stricter immigration laws, Bond gets distracted by the voice of the person said box is meant for, Q's words lilting as he speaks to another customer on the qualities of the new grind he's just purchased.

And finally, amidst a last ditch attempt to work out how many matches the Reds can afford to lose this season before they get thrown out of the top four, Bond consents to give in and start eavesdropping on the conversation being held only a few paces away from him, Q talking animatedly to a woman whose short-cropped hair is just starting to streak with grey.

"It's sourced from a farm in Chiriquí, right off Panama's western coast," Q is saying as he pats a small, re-sealable pouch on the counter. Though he's sitting this close, Bond notes with a flash of annoyance that it's going to take more than a little effort to hear want Q has to say over the other sounds of the cafe. "The plantation's quite highly elevated there, almost 1600, maybe even 1800 meters above sea level, so given the climate, it's exceptionally wonderful for speciality blends."

It's irritatingly difficult at first, trying to pick Q's words out through the rest of the background noise without looking like he's trying too hard to do so, but the more that Bond tracks down the trail of Q's voice, the easier he finds it becomes. 

Either that or Bond just simply stops caring so much about appearances, Q's warm, steady tenor an audible anchor that's impossible to ignore now that Bond has latched on to it.

"And this one here, the Santa Teresa?" Apparently on a roll, Q is pulling another pouch towards him only to unseal it, holding it out to the woman who takes it as a cue to bend slightly over the counter to smell the beans. 

"Absolutely lovely,” he says with a touch of pride. “Even more so if you’re after something with bright, fruity undertones.”

Her back turned to Bond and with her voice travelling in the completely other direction, whatever comment she makes to Q is lost almost instantaneously under the swirl of other ongoing cafe conversations, Bond only having the look on Q’s face to go on. Judging from the blatant look of delight that he’s wearing, Bond concludes that it probably has something to do with the benefits of micro-regions, or the like.

The thing is, while it's hardly a secret that Q can get almost embarrassingly excited and palpably eager when he starts talking about coffee, what Bond is beginning to realise is that so far, he's somehow only experienced those bursts of excitement by being on the receiving end of them.

Don’t get him wrong, though. Of course, being in any kind of proximity with Q is always well and good, but now that Bond is watching, listening to Q wax poetic from a somewhat respectful distance, Bond is suddenly made all that much more aware of how...endearing, it is, for the lack of a better word.

Had he _really_ managed to miss all these things the entire time? They're tiny, granted, but now that Bond sees them, they can hardly be called inconsequential. 

Like the certain grace to Q's hands when they flutter midair, for example, movements made more expressive with excitement. 

Or the way that Q's eyes can light up as well, and how something guarded falls from his face in the brief moments he speaks about the things he truly cares about.

"It's good, isn't it?" With a deft movement, Q has sealed the pouch back up again, giving it a fond pat before stowing it away to the side. The woman says something that must be in the positive because Q grins in reply, a genuinely pleased "You're right, but there's also notes of apricot and honeydew melon in." 

It's a one-sided conversation that Bond could have observed in any given cafe across the world at any time, but here's the thing: 

Bond is here _now_ and this is _Q_ , with his loosened tongue and excited hands, and the more that Bond hears, sees of both, the more he's sure that something is starting to spread slow and languid in his chest, the pressure of it growing until Bond thinks he can feel it nudging against the bones of his rib-cage.

Is this what it's supposed to feel like, then? 

Bond has spent the past week or so compartmentalising and deflecting just enough to avoid confronting the fledgling stages of this feeling, but now that he's here, it's as if being in close proximity with Q for however short a time has ripped the lids off and broken down the walls, throwing everything asunder.

And in its wake, Bond can only wander the wreckage of his heartspace, suddenly aware that the word _fledging_ might not be the best one to describe this anymore.

"I love it," Q says, blissfully unaware of how Bond hasn't touched his paper in a good twenty minutes. "Shamelessly, even, I adore it that much. Here, let me make you a cup on the house, it’s really _that_ good.”

From less than a dozen paces away, Bond looks at Q so impossibly enamoured with whatever brew he's talking about this time around and inevitably, he has to wonder: 

How would Q look like, if Q ever talked about him?

  


* * *

  


As it turns out, Bond doesn’t get to know what Q might look like if Q ever talked about him, but over the course of the rest of the afternoon, what Bond _does_ get to know is this:

That when Q has to commandeer chairs from other tables or do some creative rearranging to fit parties of seven who have just come through the door, he does it with a look of earnest apology and the offer of two cream-biscuits on the house.

That whenever the cafe’s jazz playlist throws a percussion ensemble piece into the air, Q can have a barely discernible spring and sway to his step, his fingers tapping against his thigh if his hands aren’t otherwise preoccupied.

And last but not least, that during the scarce few seconds he can spare for himself, Q downs tea like a man driven to forget the taste of anything else, stealing sips of French Earl Grey and gulping down tepid English Breakfast from a familiar-looking mug that peeks out at Bond from behind the counter. 

Each time he catches Bond looking, he lifts the letter-tile mug in a mock salute, and really, Bond doesn’t even look all _that_ often. 

Bond just...needs to rest his eyes from reading, every now and again.

“Shouldn’t you be crawling into bed sometime soon?” Q asks when he swings by with a hot water refill for Bond’s cup. It’s just gone past four in the afternoon and in the last hour, Bond has only managed to make it through less than a quarter of his paper.

“And shouldn’t _you_ go see what table five wants? I think they’ve been trying to get your attention for the past ten seconds.”

Q looks over his shoulder.

“...Bugger,” he mutters and then he’s off again, because after table five, there’s table three, and after that, a stream of walk-ins looking for take-away lattes. 

It’s not something that Bond minds too much, though. Q comes around often enough to jolt Bond awake with his presence and Bond, in turn, gets to go back to picking his own thoughts apart with a renewed, if temporary vigour.

If Bond knows at least nine ways to kill a man with his bare hands, does that mean he shouldn’t have any business knowing how Q has a tendency to get espresso dust on the right cuff of his shirt? 

And if Q isn’t a target and Bond isn’t on a mission, does Bond still have the right to tell himself that he’s been trained to notice the smallest, most inconsequential things?

“Drink it,” Q says in a tone that bodes no argument when he saunters up to Bond with a fresh mug of chamomile and Bond, in turn, just tells him that at this stage, Q could serve him reheated rainwater for all he cares, he’s too sleepy to know the difference.

“So that does mean you’re still going to drink it, right?” is all Q wants to know.

“Yes.” It’s despicable, herbal-flavoured leaf-water and Bond really could have gone home an hour ago to crawl into bed, but yes. “I’ll drink it, you tyrant.”

How is it again, the way normal people go about this whole falling in love thing?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost there! Apologies if the quality seems to have been deteriorating akjdhsa I don't even know what I'm doing anymore, half the time D;
> 
>  
> 
> [This is what Q is referring to, when he says he wants a quadriga](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandenburg_Gate#Design_and_construction)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Please,” Bond says with a measure of steadiness that he doesn’t actually feel in the slightest. “Please tell me you’re a figment of my imagination and that you’re not actually here right now.”
> 
> “You’d prefer the possibility of going mad, rather than have me physically be here?”
> 
> Across the table, Q looks slightly offended. Even more so when Bond starts to raise the _sake_ cup again, obviously having come to the conclusion that the best way out of a hallucination is to drown it out with alcohol.
> 
> “What did I just fucking say about not drinking that?” Q snaps and just like that, he’s reached out to snatch the cup from Bond’s hand, setting it down firmly in front of him. 
> 
> Not a hallucination, then.

Because Bond eventually drifts into that strange, almost dream-like phase that comes with having stayed awake for too long, he ends up lingering until closing time, keeping Q company in the quiet of the shop even as Q cleans up in brisk, practiced movements.

"There must be a rule, somewhere,” Bond is saying as Q rinses his letter-tile mug in the sink. “Some kind of regulation, when it comes to force-feeding customers. Or force-drinking, in my case.”

"Force-drinking?” The mug is dried off with care and as usual, it goes into Q’s messenger bag. “I’m sorry, but I did I miss something this afternoon? Was there a gun I was holding to your head while I served you tea?”

“Given how you loom, a gun might actually have been the less intimidating choice here, in comparison.

In reply, Q just makes a face and flips the bag-flap back down, buckling it into place.

"You come into _my_ cafe–,” he mutters, “–drinking _my_ beverages..."

"Well I didn’t actually ask for the tea now, did I?."

For a moment, Q looks as if he wants to contest the point, but thinking the better of it, he settles for an eyeroll instead, shouldering his bag as he does. 

“If you’re staying up far beyond your bedtime just because you wanted to make sure I went home feeling like I should have put cyanide in your tea, then congratulations,” he says. “You can go to sleep with the sweet taste of success tonight.”

“Surely you mean the sweet taste of almonds?” 

It’s a constant miracle, that Q can still multitask even in the midst of all his sniping, but multitask he does, Q somehow having managed to usher Bond out the door all while breaking Bond’s heart one word at a time. 

“Or bitter smell of almonds, actually,” Bond amends now that they’re standing in the evening air. “Has the price of cyanide suddenly dropped since the last time we had this conversation?”

“That could be the case, but given how long you’ve been here?” Absently, Q is patting down the pockets of his coat, trying to find his key before he finally fishes it out of his back pocket with a flourish. “It’s far more likely that it’s my tolerance levels for your shenanigans, that have dropped.”

“But there are easier ways to kill a man, surely? You could actually throttle me right now, if you’d like, and I think I might actually thank you, since that means I get to go to sleep right here on the pavement and not have to walk home to do it.”

In the midst of locking the front entrance to his cafe and with his back turned to Bond, Q sounds as if he’s smiling as he speaks.

“As tempting as that sounds–,” he says wryly, turning to face Bond, “–I don’t like to get my hands dirty.”

“Pity,” Bond sighs and when he sticks his hands a little deeper into his coat pockets, he can feel the edges of the gift-box bumping up against his fingers. “Looks like you’ll just have to keep putting up with me for another day, then.” 

“Oh, _joy_.”

Its taken the entire day for Bond to find the right time to do this, but now, with the haze of sleep and the softening light making decisions come a little easier, Bond can finally rid his pocket of the load that’s been weighing it down.

“Aren’t you just the lucky one, though?” he says casually as he pulls the box out with a flourish and holds it out to Q, “At least you can never say that I don’t occasionally make it easier for you.”

Q, in true Q fashion, just blinks and raises an eyebrow at its sudden appearance. 

A moment passes.

"Really?" There’s a healthy dose of disbelief in Bond’s voice and he shakes the box just a little, as if the sound might tempt Q to take it. " _Really_ , Q? Literal months of bringing you souvenirs and you still need to act surprised when I come back with something for you?"

"Well I can't just instantly reach out and take it now, can I?" Despite what he'd just said, Q is already extending a hand towards Bond’s, gingerly plucking it from Bond’s open palm. "One needs to have some semblance of...decorum, when accepting a gift." 

"Decorum," Bond repeats bluntly. "Here and now. With _me_." 

Taking stock of the thoroughly unamused expression that Bond ends his deadpan sentence with, Q can only huff a half-laugh in reply. 

"Manners, Bond. Contrary to popular belief, some of us might still have them, in this day and age."

The look on Bond’s face is a pointed one and in response, Q just grins, one hand curling around the cardboard body of the box while another gingerly lifts its lid.

"Oh," he says ever so softly, when he finally sees what's inside. “I didn’t expect you to really get it.”

“So that’s a...good thing, right?” ventures Bond, though he already thinks he knows the answer. It’s not a crime to want actual, verbal confirmations, after all, and honestly, more of Q’s voice? 

Never, _never_ a bad thing.

While it might take a while for the smile to dawn on Q’s face, at least it happens like how a slow break in the clouds would, Bond basking a little in the warmth of it when Q finally looks away from his gift and up at Bond.

"It’s a good thing,” he says firmly and Bond, trying his best to make light of the situation that makes him feel like doing incredibly stupid things, just shrugs. “It’s most definitely a good thing.”

"Well, you did mention wanting a Quadriga of your own before I left, so I thought..." 

And there it is already, the first stupid thing that Bond has oh so kindly subjected himself to, almost instantaneously. 

"You thought...?" Q prompts expectantly.

"I thought you'd like it?" 

It's a lame attempt and Bond knows it, though he does try to cover it up with an airy "Also, the logistics of trying to transport the original would be an absolute nightmare, not to mention highly illegal."

If his original response had actually been more along the lines of _I thought that since it's the first time you've actually asked me for something, I didn't want to disappoint you_ , then...well. 

An omission of truth isn’t exactly a lie now, is it?

Q, for his part at least, doesn't exactly seem displeased by the response, and when he lifts the small replica of the Brandenburg Gate from its bed of tissues, it’s still with that same smile he’d been wearing so widely beforehand. 

“I do like it very much indeed, in spite of its less than illegal nature.”

“Less than illegal…” Bond raises a knowing eyebrow. “Is that a preference for illegal procurations that I’m hearing, Q?”

“Kindly banish the thought, Bond.” Having admired the replica from all angles, Q carefully sets it back into its box and shuts the lid, though he still prefers to hold it in his hand rather than consent to put it into his bag. “You’re enough trouble as it is, without the police coming in to question me over a string of stolen items and the like."

"But it's trouble that's worth it, is it not?"

Q weighs the box in his hand and seems to think, for a while. 

"For tonight, yes. Quite, quite worth it, though god knows I'll gladly volunteer a number of things to be put on this list of stolen items."

"Let's see, that'll probably be...your sense of boredom while at work, right on the very top? Followed by your free time in the afternoons?" 

"I was going more for my sanity and basic common sense, but those two would fit in very nicely as well, thank you."

They've been here before, in the exact same place and time, doing the exact same thing, but now, as they trade stingless barbs with the air turning cold around them, Bond can't help but feel as if there's just something...different, this time around. 

How strange it is, that just a few months can feel like an entire lifetime ago. But come to think of it, he _did_ have a dangerously close call with death since the last time they did this, didn’t he? And that, at the very least, has to count for something, right?

"You let me down, Q," Bond says just as the streetlights are starting to come on. "Truly, you do. Just your sanity and basic common sense?” 

“Were there more things you had in mind?”

On a roll now, Bond just scoffs. “Well,” he says, “Obviously. What about the more important things? Your benchmark for every other customer, for example? Your heart, to go with?"

The rise of Q’s cheeks are pink in the glow of the evening and Bond, in turn, just tells himself that it’s an unfortunate trick of light. 

Just the sunset and shadows, that’s all.

"I can be an excellent thief if I put my mind to it, I'll have you know," Bond adds when Q doesn’t seem like he has an immediate reply at the ready. "The least you can do is acknowledge that."

"Oh, it's an acknowledgement of your crimes that you want now, is it?" 

If he were to look back on this, Bond thinks he should have heard it in the sound of Q's voice, or maybe saw it coming, from a mile away, in the lilt of Q’s words. 

Realistically, though, how could he have even _known_ , let alone anticipated it? 

When Q leans in to briefly press his lips against the side of Bond’s cheek, Bond is sure he sees the world grow just a little brighter. 

Another trick of light? Bond doesn’t think so

"Freely given and not a theft–," Q is saying as he draws away, "–even if you've seemed to expect otherwise." 

"Q–,” starts Bond, but Q just shakes his head.

"Save it for when you're more awake, Mr. Bond." 

The look on Q's face is frustratingly unreadable, and if Q is wearing a smile when he starts to step back and move away, it's still one that could mean any number of incomprehensible things. 

"Go home for now,” he says. “I'll hold you responsible to the rest of your crimes in the morning."

  


* * *

  


In a twist of fate that's as cruel it is thoroughly unsurprising in the end, Bond doesn’t get to see Q the next morning. 

Instead, what Bond gets is this:

“Boarding pass and double oh three’s briefing documents,” Moneypenny says with only the barest hint of sympathy in her voice as she unloads the mission pack into Bond’s hands. “Your usual Walther is in there as well, somewhere, along with a gently worded reminder from Boothroyd to not treat it too badly.”

“Lovely.” Except going by the tone of Bond’s voice and the accompanying look on his face, it’s _anything_ but. “They couldn’t have gotten Harriet to do this? Sayid, maybe?”

This being a twelve hour flight followed by another hour's worth of ground transport, at least, a potentially messy extraction waiting for him at the end of it. 

You'd think, that after years of doing this, it'd get easier and not all the more exhausting, but as things stand, Bond already feels as if every fibre of his being wants to protest against being forced into a plane again, the prospect of crossing yet another handful of international time zones making him briefly wonder whether he should just give up on a regular sleeping schedule.

"Don’t look so put out, Bond,” Moneypenny says when she spots the look of resignation on Bond’s face. “It’s not like we even had a choice, in this case. Double oh-nine managed to get herself put on Interpol’s no-fly list again, after last month’s muck-up in Romania.”

“You don’t say.”

Pulling up next to them with a muted purr, the town car that’s supposed to take Bond to Heathrow has just arrived and it idles now, by the side entrance, Bond going to put his bag in the boot. Heels click-clacking on the cobblestones, Moneypenny follows him around to the back.

"Also," she adds with an air of rationality, "Don't tell me you have no idea how needlessly intricate Sayid can get with extractions. That’s hardly the thing we need right now, seeing the nature of this operation.”

“The nature of this operation? By that I’m assuming you mean fucked to hell and beyond all belief?”

Moneypenny rolls her eyes.

“Time sensitive, Bond,” she sighs. “Time sensitive is the word I was looking for."

"Funny, here I was thinking that fucked up would be the more accurate descriptor, here."

“How about we call a truce and just agree that they complement each other, hmm?”

She pats Bond companionably on the arm then, though with Moneypenny, the touch isn't always encouraging as it is usually vaguely smug.

"If it makes you feel any better," she says with far too much cheer for five thirty in the morning, "No one wanted to be the one who had to tell you that you'd have to get on a plane again, barely 24 hours after you just got off one."

“Which is the exact reason why you so readily volunteered yourself, right?”

The smile that graces Moneypenny’s face is serene, if a little self-satisfied.

“Look on the bright side, Bond,” she says with enthusiasm of someone who hasn’t been in the field for far too long and has been enjoying every moment of it. “At least Kyoto is lovely this time of the year.”

Disgruntled, Bond just slides into the backseat and slams the door shut.

  


* * *

  


It's ten minutes to boarding when Bond finally gives in and calls Moneypenny, the results that he'd been trying to coax from Google giving him nowhere near what he needs to know. 

Damn Q and damn his nameless cafe. 

Damn Bond's own ridiculous expectations too, while he's at it, for thinking he could have gone about this in an ordinary manner

"I need a favour," he says when Moneypenny picks up on the second ring. 

Mostly as an afterthought, he tacks on a "Please" as well, at the end.

"What is it, Bond? Goldfish that need feeding? A cactus that needs watering?"

"Just a message I need to pass to someone, actually."

"A message?”

If Bond didn't have any reservations about asking Moneypenny for help before this, he certainly has them now, the very idea of willingly sending her to meet Q sending a tangible chill up his spine. 

Then again, as the final boarding call starts to sound from the airport's public announcement system, it's not like Bond has any other choice here.

"There's a cafe, just off Beaufort Street," Bond begins, and hopes to god that he isn't making a massive mistake.

  


* * *

  


Bond hits the ground running when he gets to Osaka International, Jun already waiting out front with a rented car the moment Bond exits the arrivals area.

"How bad?" Bond asks and the set to Jun's mouth is grim, Jun handing Bond a slim dossier before he answers.

"Bad enough. We lost audio a few hours back, but before that, he managed to convey enough information about his location for us to guess where he might be."

"And the rest is going as planned?"

Jun is keeping his eyes on the road as he merges into the flow of traffic, and while Bond isn't rude enough as to outright look, he knows that Jun's hands are gripping the wheel with a considerable amount of pressure, his knuckles showing white with the strain. 

"It is," he says tightly. They've turned onto the Chugoku expressway by now and with the gradual increase in speed, some of the tension in Jun's hands has started to bleed out as well, his grip no longer vise-like. "Now that you're here, it is.

  


* * *

  


The conversation falls by the wayside after that and Bond, wisely, chooses to let it lie. 

Bond's worked with Jun before, on the rare occasion he's been called to longer jaunts in this particular corner of the world, and if the other man might not be as easy with his words as say, Ansell, or even Li Ru might be, that doesn't take away from the fact that he's an excellent, _excellent_ handler. 

Evidence of which? The amount of self-flagellation that Jun must be putting himself through now, even though it's most definitely no fault of his that double-oh three somehow got himself into such a spectacular fuck-up. 

The thing is, if any one else were here right right now, this would probably be a good time to drop not-too-subtle hints about how it isn't Jun's fault in the slightest, and that even though it seems bad, he shouldn’t worry. 

Double-oh three is going to be just fine

Everything, absolutely everything, is going to work out okay.

Lucky for Jun, though, he has the (mis)fortune of getting Bond instead of anyone else in this car, and while Bond can very well make sure that everything is going to work out just fine by simply bringing double-oh three back in one piece, the rest of the emotional heavy-lifting is going to fallon double-oh three instead, thank you very much. 

Besides, Jun doesn't look like the kind who'll appreciate words without actions anyways, at this stage.

  


* * *

  


The next time Jun does speak again, they're ten minutes from Kyoto and five from the safe house that MI6 has been operating from.

"You'll proceed with the original objective of double-oh three's operation only after establishing that he has been secured?" he asks and as much as it may sound like a question, Bond knows better than to assume that much. 

It’s a statement and a directive, that’s what it is, rolled clear and simple into one, and if Jun is just being too damned polite to make it sound that way, well thank god Bond has been through enough to know that manners never make an appearance without a reason.

“Is that your suggested course of action?”

Jun looks over at Bond and really, that’s all the answer he needs, Bond smiling grimly in return.

“Right then,” he says. “Duly noted.”

  


* * *

  


Perkins is in bad shape, by the time Bond finally finds him.

“Double oh-three?”

“Present,” comes the hoarse greeting from the corner of the room and when Bond goes straight for the bindings that they’ve tied Perkins down to the chair with, Perkins slowly cracks open an eyelid. 

“Fancy seeing you here, double oh-seven,” he drawls. “Come to join the party?”

“Come to chaperone your drunken arse home, more like.”

At twenty-six, double-oh three is their newest and youngest recruit yet, and when Perkins leans over the side of his chair a little to spit blood on the floor, Bond can begrudgingly start to see why Jun might have cause to worry. 

It’s not that Perkins can’t aim and shoot and take a beating like the best of them, but really, does he have any business looking so _young_ while doing it?

“Bastards broke my ankles, I’m afraid,” Perkins says apologetically when Bond starts work on the bindings around his legs and wincing, Bond sets about doing it little more carefully, if not exactly slower. “Sorry about that.”

“Starting to wish yet, that you’ve stayed with Five instead of coming over to us?”

Because Perkins still hasn’t seen the worst of it yet and is still young enough for ankles to heal, for bruises to fade, he just grins. 

“Fuck no,” he says with feeling as he accepts the spare gun and comms piece that Bond presses into his trembling hands. The muscles in Perkins’ jaw are tight from the pain, but as long as his eyes are still clear, that’s enough for Bond. “I’d probably be somewhere out in Derry or Belfast still, if I had, and who’d want to pass on places as lovely as this to stay in places like _that_?”

“Maniacs like you, clearly.”

“Takes one to know one. And oh–” Perkins pauses for a moment and evidently, the comm piece is up and running, judging from how Perkins has cocked his head to one side, listening quite intently. 

“Hello there, Jun,” he says after a while and what Bond suspects had been a tirade from the man in question. “Ah, _ii-yo_. No, not at all. And Bond–...would you like to–….Yes I get it. Yes. _Shaanai_ , it’s not your intel that was bad–…”

Sighing, Bond gets up, shaking his head as he does.

_Back in five_ he mouths at Perkins, because there’s still a man out there who needs a bullet in his head, and Perkins, in turn, just nods briefly at Bond’s departure before turning back to whatever one-sided conversation he’s holding, grimacing a little as he does.

  


* * *

  


So maybe Bond has been spoiled, these past few months, but after he leaves Masaki's body in one of the courtyards for clean-up to dispose of and after he's also had to physically carry Perkins to where Jun is waiting with the car, Bond is disappointed, to say the least, when he remembers that he doesn't have any of Q's coffee to drown the remains of the day in.

"I did hear from Li Ru that you have developed quite a taste for coffee," Jun says once they've settled Perkins in one of the rooms and Bond brings the matter of coffee up, along with the question of where he can find some. “But I don’t drink it though, sorry.”

"I do," yells Perkins from where he'd been eavesdropping and at the sudden sound, Jun lifts his head, exasperated. 

“Should he…” Bond starts, but in reply Jun just sighs. 

“No,” he says. “But has that ever stopped him? Also no.”

They have to migrate to Perkins' room after that, at Perkins’ loud insistence, and if Jun casually deposits himself on the edge of Perkins’ bed before he seems to remember, belatedly, that Bond is with them as well, the look that he follows it up with is one of cool assessment.

_I dare you_ he seems to imply as he glances at Bond, body language just a bit more caged and the earlier, relaxed curve of his spine gone rigid. _Go on, I fucking dare you_.

Except, Bond could hardly care less, really, and Perkins, despite the cocktail of painkillers that he’s probably drugged to the gills with, quickly picks up on the fact as well. 

“ _Maa, Jun-kun_ ,” Perkins says chidingly, and pats Jun’s thigh, “ _Daijoubu desu yo,_ I think Bond will be probably more offended if you tried to serve him decaf, or something. Am I right, Bond?” 

“I hate decaf,” offers Bond helpfully while the look on Jun’s face eases into something that’s more mildly scandalised, rather than outright antagonistic. “More than many other things.”

With Perkins’ hand is still resting comfortably on his thigh, Jun looks as if he’s torn between removing said hand or removing Bond from the room itself. 

The disinclination towards doing either, though, mean that both do get to stay, in the end.

  


* * *

  


Even if it takes a while and a bit more harmless teasing from Perkins, Jun does eventually relax enough around Bond to drop his guard a little, going even as far as to add a recommendation of his own atop of Perkins’ seemingly endless list of cafes that Bond needs to go to.

“They don’t serve coffee,” Jun says as he points out the location on the map that he’s pulled up on the screen of his mobile, “But they do make a very good _kaiseki_ , a traditional multi-course meal, that you can try.”

And since Bond isn’t one to say no to things that have words such as _good_ and _multi-course_ in it, try it Bond does, later in the evening. 

The restaurant that Jun sends him to sits on the banks of the Kamo River to overlook the water, and as dish after delicate dish of the _kaiseki_ is placed in front of him, Bond has to wonder if he should actually try his hand at accidentally provoking Jun more, if Jun’s idea of penance always involves incredible culinary recommendations. 

So what if Bond can’t even pronounce, let alone identify half of whatever it is they’ve been feeding him? 

Multiple courses and three paired cups of _sake_ in, Bond thinks he’d gladly volunteer to never know the ingredients of anything he was served ever again, if only for it all to taste like this.

This sixth course that he’s just been served, for example, an aoyagi surf clam dressed in its own shell with a sesame vinaigrette ans what the waiter had called the _sunomono_ part of the meal.

“Yuzu-infused _sake_ , sir, to pair with?” 

Bond nods and is poured a cup, the colour of it a pale gold that’s almost imperceptible in the warm, low lights of the restaurant.

“Please enjoy, sir,” parrots the waiter for the sixth time that evening and then he’s gone again, rising with a practiced grace from where he’d been kneeling by the side of Bond’s table. 

Sitting cross-legged to eat might take some getting used to, but as long as it’s not in formal _seiza_ for more than twenty minutes at a go, Bond doesn’t mind too much. 

Besides, how can one mind, when–

“I wouldn’t drink that, if I were you.”

While none of the _sake_ actually sloshes over the side of the cup, Bond comes dangerously close to it, the outward calm with which he sets the cup back down on the table a clear testament to how deeply ingrained his training really is.

“Sorry, was that a bit sudden?” continues the voice that Bond is sure he isn’t actually hearing. “It was, wasn’t it?”

“Please,” Bond says with a measure of steadiness that he doesn’t actually feel in the slightest. “Please tell me you’re a figment of my imagination and that you’re not actually here right now.”

“You’d prefer the possibility of going mad, rather than have me physically be here?”

Across the table, Q looks slightly offended. Even more so when Bond starts to raise the _sake_ cup again, obviously having come to the conclusion that the best way out of a hallucination is to drown it out with alcohol.

“What did I just fucking say about not drinking that?” Q snaps and just like that, he’s reached out to snatch the cup from Bond’s hand, setting it down firmly in front of him. 

Not a hallucination, then. 

Or if it is, it’s a terrifyingly good one, one that’s tangible enough for Bond to start feeling what might be legitimate fear spreading up his spine.

“Look,” Q says with less bite than before. “Look, I’m sorry that I have to do it like this, but I’m tired of all the near-death experiences, okay? I wasn’t joking, you know, when I said that you’d get my attention and not my approval if you died on me.”

At a loss for what to do or say, Bond can only stare in reply. 

Surreptitiously flex his own fingers as well, as his eyes dart from Q’s face to the _sake_ cup that’s currently being held hostage between Q’s hands.

He’s not holding onto anything, that’s for sure, and the last time he checked, he wasn’t drugged up on pain medication as well, or even mildly sleep deprived, at that. 

For god’s sake, Bond isn’t even _stressed_ , though that might be an emotional state that’s on the brink of changing very, very soon.

“Bond?” Q, damn him, is actually starting to look slightly concerned, as if the extent of what he’s just done is slowly dawning upon him. “I’m sorry, I really am, but I didn’t know how else to go about this in such a short time. You were going to drink it and I didn’t…”

He trails off then, almost guiltily, and though it might not be the right time for this, Bond finds that he’s absurdly glad that he’d chosen a corner table tonight. Seated as he is with his back to the rest of the restaurant, at least no one other than Q can see the look that Bond currently has on his face.

Doubt. Disbelief. Distrust. And running riot under it all, the strangest sense of wonderment.

“You’re here,” Bond finally hears himself say, and the words sound so foreign to him, it’s almost as if someone else is speaking them. “How can you be _here_?”

What’s that quote again? The one from the book, about impossibilities and probabilities? 

When the impossible has been eliminated, whatever that remains must be the truth, no matter how improbable. 

And so here it is, the improbable truth: 

“This is real,” Q says. “And if you’ll hear me out, I promise, I’ll explain it all.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _ii-yo_ = it's fine  
>  _Shaanai_ = it can't be helped, in Kansai dialect
> 
> -
> 
> It's 5am here and because i'm shite at time management, I have about...9 hours to make the last chapter readable, if not presentable. Every year, I tell myself I won't join another big bang, and every year, this happens. Every single year.
> 
> I apologise in advance, for what the next part. It's been almost 24 hours, since I last slept ;A;


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Well,” Bond says at length once the math has resolved itself and he’s _still_ not too sure about how old Q really could be. “Evidently, we’ve been lied to all this time, with all the images that we’ve come up with for death. Now that I’ve seen the real thing, I don’t think I expected it to look this…”
> 
> “Young?” suggests Q.
> 
> He smiles, slight and more tentative than anything Bond has ever seen from him, and suddenly, Bond is struck by the realisation that this is the first time he’s seen an actual smile on Q’s face the entire night
> 
> “Good looking,” Bond corrects, and the grin that spreads on Q’s face is like sunshine itself.

 

 

Real, as it would appear, is actually a very subjective sort of word.

Take the sliver of _daikon_ between Bond’s chopsticks, for example. Edible, tart on the tongue, physically tangible.

Ergo, real.

Or the prickling sense of fear that Bond has barely managed to wrestle down, the discomforting sense of it pooling at the base of his spine. Uneasy, keeping his back ramrod straight, emotionally perceptible.

Ergo, also real.

Is it always so easy to define the parameters of reality, though?

Can a belief be real? What about an idea?

Does _knowing_ something automatically drag it out into the realm of fact?

Because here’s the thing: Bond knows Q.

Knows, without the shadow of a doubt, that Q owns a coffee shop on the corner and has the bad habit of using coffee-dust stained fingers to push his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. Knows as well, that Q has an incurable sweet tooth and likes pretentious jazz music just as much as he likes his tea without any sugar or milk, if he can help it.

Q, _his_ Q, at least, exists.

Bond’s Q is real.

But this one, though? The one that’s sitting in front of him now, with his feet tucked under his thighs and hands still curled around the cup of Bond’s _sake_?

Bond has some serious doubts.

“Just in case you were wondering,” Q says as Bond picks up a piece of clam for appearances’ sake, eating it without really paying attention to how it tastes, “No one can see me, unless I want them to. And by extension, no one will see you too, whenever you interact with me.”

“I...see.”

Except, Bond doesn’t see at all. Some small, sane part of Bond can tell that the clam really is rather good, and that it’s a pity he can’t savour it more, but the larger, clearly insane part of him is mostly preoccupied with trying to process the words coming out of Q’s mouth.

What is Bond expected to say, even, in the face of something like this?

Oh jolly good, thank you ever for so kindly using your magical prowess to keep us both hidden? Would it be too much to ask you to wave your hand and make the plates and cutlery disappear next, please?

The idea is ludicrous enough that Bond has to eat the last piece of clam just to stop the burst of irrational laughter that’s threatening to spill from him.

“Right,” Bond says, once he thinks he can speak again. “Right then. Talents of invisibility aside, are you going to tell me what you’re doing here and how you even got here to begin with?”

“Didn’t I just explain both parts?”

“Not in too explicit terms, no.”

Q sighs then, looking as if he’s preparing himself for what Bond hopes is a lengthy, in-depth explanation, but when he stops short, Bond can only barely withhold a frustrated sigh of his own.

“Q–”

Shaking his head, Q throws a pointed glance at whatever it is that’s over Bond’s shoulder before inexplicably downing the entire cup of _sake_ in one shot, pulling a face as he does.

_What?_

“Later,” Q mouths as he hurriedly pushes the empty cup back towards Bond and sure enough, barely a few seconds pass before Bond’s usual waiter is coming towards them with the next course of the meal.

“ _Shokuji_ course, sir,” he says as he sets down a tray laden with small bowls of rice and soup, a serving dish arranged with preserved vegetables all around its sides. “May I clear your previous course?”

“Please,” Bond says calmly, though all he wants to do is shake the man. Grab him by the arms to turn him towards where Q is still sitting and demand to know whether he can see Q too, or if Bond is the only one who’s insane here, but–

“Please,” comes the usual rehearsed request, “Enjoy your course, sir.”

When waiter leaves a moment later, it’s with Bond’s empty dishes in his hands and with no inkling at all, that Q had been at the table the whole time.

 

* * *

 

“Explain,” comes the blunt demand once the waiter is out of earshot, though all irrational sense tells Bond that it shouldn’t even matter anymore, whether anyone can hear him or not. “Explain to me _right now_ how that just happened and why.”

“The fact that he didn’t see me?” The waiter had poured Bond a fresh cup of tea as well, before he had left, and Q eyes it now, conspicuous in how much he wants it. “Or were you referring to the thing with the _sake_?”

It shouldn’t be a comfort, given what just happened, but watching Q be...well, Q, for the first time the entire evening, it’s with a vague sense of relief that Bond pushes the cup towards Q who just falls on it with obvious delight.

“Both,” Bond says as he watches Q finish half the cup in one long drink. Mysterious as Q might be in so many other areas, at least Bond can still find reassurance in the fact that some things just don’t change, inexplicable talents or not. “And I don’t care which you start with, just as long as you start.”

“I’m assuming that you’ll want it to be in explicit detail, as well?”

The expression on Bond’s face is one of aloof expectancy, Q meeting it head on with an indecipherable look of his own.

“Why don’t you indulge me,” Bond says at length, even though he’s not sure if he’s prepared to know the full extent of it. “I have all night.”

 

* * *

 

Q, because he’s baffling, decides to start at a place that makes no amount of sense at all:

“They couldn’t be allowed to know about the _sake_ ,” he says a little wearily and when Bond meets this indecipherable comment with silence, Q just sighs as if Bond’s the one who’s being impossible, right now.

“If it hadn’t gone back to the kitchens finished–,” Q tries again, “–they’d just want to try again, and I can’t–”

“They?” Nothing, _nothing_ that has come out of Q's mouth so far has even remotely resembles anything like a proper explanation and Bond isn't appreciating it one bit. "Who are _they_ , Q?"

“Not important at the moment, seeing that I’ve already called in a favour with a local and–”

“No, wait, what? What favour? What local are you talking about?”

“If–,” Q finally snaps, irritably, “–you'd stop interrupting me and let me finish at least two sentences in a row, I _will_ get to all of that in turn, Bond. I’ll even have fifteen minutes of a Q and A session at the end just for you, if the need to hear your own voice is that great.”

While Bond hadn’t really been convinced about this being his Q beforehand, at least he’s a little more convinced now, Bond folding his arms in pointed silence.

Taking this as his cue, Q barrels on:

“As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted–,” he continues, “–you had to appear as if you'd finished the _sake_ , or they'd go for less subtle means of killing you later. Things like wilful cross-contamination and the rest, I can stop easily enough, but a bullet in the dark?"

Q sighs, at this point, taking another long drink from Bond's tea cup and finishing it all in two long swallows before he sets the emptied cup back onto the table.

"I'm a little too out of practice for that, I'm afraid," he says, regretfully. "And look, let's face it: as much as I enjoy seeing you, Bond? I think I might actually dislike having to save your sorry mortal arse more, and I've already done done that one time too many, tonight."

A pause then, as Q takes stock of the look on Bond’s face.

“Before I go on any further, did that make a modicum of sense to you at all?”

It's tentative and more than a little tired, Q folding his hands neatly on the table now that he doesn't have any warmth left over in Bond's cup.

"Yes or no answers only, please, at this point," he adds, and having pieced the fragments of Q's exceedingly shoddy explanation together, filled in the blanks with the only elaborations that fit, Bond can only start a growing sense of horror start to gnaw at him, the feeling probably reflecting on his face because Q, in turn, has taken to wearing a look of mild panic.

“Bond, wait, I–” Q is starting to say, except Bond just cuts him off.

"There was something in the _sake_ , wasn't there?" he asks, voice low, and Bond is already starting to unfold himself from where he'd been seated on the floor. "There was poison in there meant for me, something probably slow acting so I'd keel over later in the night instead. All this time you've just been _sitting_ there, when we could have--"

“Sit back _down_ , Bond.”

Lithe as he may look, there’s apparently a fair amount of strength in those arms, Q reaching out and easily taking hold of Bond’s shoulder to push him back down onto the floor again.

"No, what are you even--"

“Stop and think, Bond, for just _one_ bloody moment, if you will."

With his free hand braced on the wood grain and half leaning across Bond's unfinished meal, Q looks like he's two seconds away from going round to Bond's side of the table and physically beating the understanding into Bond.

"What kind of idiot do you even take me for, really?" he snaps. "Would I have willingly, deliberately poisoned myself and then sat here, calmly holding this conversation with you?"

"Are you saying you didn't? I know what I saw, Q, so if you'll just stop--"

Trying to rise again and drag Q to the nearest hospital, Bond only finds that Q's hand is pushing down once more, Q looking even more irked the second time around.

"Was there at least forty milligrams of tetrodotoxin in there when I took the cup from you? Yes, I admit there was. It tasted like shit and I'd actually kill for another cup of tea right now, to wash out the taste, but that's actually besides the point. The point is--"

And here, Q finally lets go of Bond shoulder to settle back down on his haunches, eying Bond warily in case Bond decides to try and get up again.

"The point is--," he says, "--is that I could have have drank an entire ocean's worth of that foul thing and _still_ , it wouldn't kill me. Are you beginning to see what I'm trying to get at here, Bond?"

Now, Bond isn’t prone to hysterics, but given the current circumstances, he thinks he might get a pass on this one, this time around.

"No," comes the honest reply. "Not in the fucking slightest."

 

* * *

 

When faced with a barrage of information, what Bond usually does is focus on the points that have the most immediate implications, every other subtle nuance be damned to hell and back for the time being.

If his handler is yelling instructions in his ear, gunmen are shooting at him from a rooftop, and there's an explosive rigged to go off in fifteen seconds?

Easy. Straightforward. Bond knows exactly what to do, because even if it's a clusterfuck of a situation, at least everything makes logical _sense_. It's just physics and physicalities, common sense and adrenaline.

This, though? Bond is coming up short, he really is, because so far, this is all he has to go with:

Q, sitting in front of him, armed with a vaguely irate look on his face.

An empty teacup that Bond is sure he didn't drink from, which means that yes, Q _really_ is sitting in front of him

Also, give or take at least forty milligrams of TTX that Q has apparently ingested, twenty five of the of which is already enough to kill a man on a good day.

What the _fuck_?

"Run it by me again," Bond says with only the faintest veneer of calm on the outside. "Tell me, with diagrams and finger puppets if you must, _how_ it is that you think you can't die from a neurotoxin that's at least a hundred times more lethal than cyanide?"

"We always come back to the cyanide, don't we?"

" _Q_."

"Alright, yes. Fine. About that." Elbows resting on the table, Q steeples his fingers, taking in a deep breath. When he exhales, Q actually looks more apprehensive than before, if not almost outright nervous.

"TTX can't kill me, Bond, because nothing can. Literally nothing on this earth can do the job, anymore."

"Why, because you're immortal?"

Bond has the barely controllable urge to throw his hands up in the air and simply walk away from the whole situation, the fact that he's still somehow sitting here made possible only by the fact that it's _Q_ , that Bond is slowly losing the last vestiges of his sanity over.

"For fuck's sake," sighs Bond, defeated and more to himself than anything, at this point. "I can't believe I have to ask, but are you even _human_?"

It might have taken almost the entirety of this unfortunate event, but eventually, Q does finally give his first straight answer of the night:

"No," he says, softly. "No I'm not."

"Then what are you? Vampire? Faerie? _What_ , Q?"

Of course, the look that Q gives him at this just has to be one look that Bond knows all too intimately, though in its usual context, it's more often found in the wake of bad jibes and double entendres, not life-changing revelations.

Exasperated, yet, strangely indulgent, it's the one where Q looks like he's perpetually on the brink of a sigh and the person that he's looking at is the cause of it.

Frustrated, but still somewhat fond, it's the one that has greeted Bond almost every single time he's stepped through the cafe's doors over the past ten months, also coincidentally the reason why he's still rooted the spot, rather than bolting out the nearest exit like any sane person would.

"I'm hardly any of those things, Bond, though it's actually quite flattering, if you think I could be one of the fey."

Q smiles and inevitably, Bond feels another inch of his resolve to approach this in a rational manner start to crumble away, swept further into this evergrowing sea of madness.

"Then? What else is there?"

“Death, Bond." The smile on Q's face stays put and suddenly, Bond realises that it's possible to be both stupidly in love and still, stupidly terrified. "I can't die because I'm Death. That'd just be a massive contradiction."

 

* * *

 

Bond would have sorely liked more than a few moments to process all of this, but given how life (death?) doesn’t care about what Bond wants, all he gets is thirty seconds of normalcy while he signs the check for his meal, foisting off some half-baked excuse about a work emergency to attend to least he has to sit through another three courses in front of Q like this.

Death.

_Death_ of all things. People. Events.

It shouldn't make sense, but given everything that's led up to this moment, maybe it does. That, or Bond has really just gone so far off the deep end, he doesn't know that he's drowning, yet.

“You should have tried to make it to the _mizumono_ course, at least,” Q is saying a bit regretfully as they exit the restaurant, and Bond doesn’t even know what to say, having operated mostly on autopilot since Q’s big reveal. “Desserts in Japan are quite delectable, you know.”

"Of course they are."

Walking briskly down the promenade and with Q by his side, Bond thinks he should just move his 11am flight to an earlier time and check himself into The Priory the moment he lands, because surely, _surely_ MI6 must have some kind of deal with the NHS, right? Agents who've lost their marbles, after being in the field for far too long.

After all, if the place is good enough for Eric Clapton, then Bond thinks he wouldn’t have too hard a time, there.

“Bond?” Q asks and Bond wonders, briefly, if it's possible for things to actually go away if he simply starts ignoring them. Like a poor man's version of mind over matter, though Death is hardly something he thinks he can ignore for long.

" _Bond_."

No such hope, though, because as much as Bond had been clinging to the obscure hope that Q would bugger off or that someone would helpfully point out that he's being followed by a personification of Death itself, the firm grip on that Q has on Bond's arm stops every other thought short in his mind.

"Please," he says, a little pleadingly. "Will you just...stop, for a moment?"

Perhaps it’s the grounding physicality of it, or maybe it’s just the fact that Q is deceptively strong when he wants to be, but Bond does stop in his tracks, then. Turns to face Q as well, though he does it with the irrational fear of not knowing who or what might be staring back at him.

When Bond forces himself to look Q full in the face, though, in the lamplight and glow of other riverside establishments, Q is just...Q.

Wild-haired and with black-rimmed glasses slipping down his nose, exactly like he had always been, even if his face pinched with what seems to be worry and regret.

"Yes?" Bond asks tightly.

The look on Q’s face that's dangerously close to hurt, and when Q’s grasp falls from his arm, Bond thinks with a slight sense of delirium that he might actually miss the weight of it, if only a little.

“I’m sorry,” he says. "I am. I really am. I should have done this is in a better way, but if you want me to leave, for a while, I will."

With the temporary sense of flippancy all but gone in the face of Bond's natural instinct to cut and run, Bond is suddenly made aware of how utterly miserable Q looks. Also, the fact that Q seems to be...apologising, though for the life of him, Bond can't imagine what for.

For showing up and saving Bond’s life?

For making Bond second-guess his sanity too many times in one night?

Or maybe, could it be for omitting one very important fact over the course of all these months?

Now that he thinks about it, the last two might actually be eligible for an apology of some sort, but with Q looking the way he does now, downcast and a little pained, Bond...Bond just can't bring himself to demand more of what he thinks he deserves.

Logically, what could Q have done, even? Done nothing at all and let Bond die later in the night? Slipped in this one fact between serves of coffee and cake, making it out to be like a casual statement about the weather?

Hello, here’s your order and that’ll be five pounds fifty, please, today. Oh, and on that note? I’m actually a personification of Death, just thought you should know.

_Ridiculous_ Bond thinks to himself, and the more he mulls on it, the more he feels as if (and not for the first time that night either) the only response he can realistically have to this is unhinged, completely irrational laughter.

Because in the end, of course Bond would be the kind of strange, unlucky bastard who would go and fall in love with Death itself, and Death, in turn, could maybe, _just_ maybe, be the kind of perplexing, hapless kind who would love him back as well.

"Bond?" Q asks and for all the fact that he's actually one of things that people are most terrified of, Q looks remarkably...glum, as he fists his hands lightly by his sides. "Is that what you want? Because I can leave now, I really can, and you won't even have to see me ever again, if you don't want to."

Except Bond, damn his stupid, useless heart, doesn’t want Q to leave.

And on that note, fucked if Bond had spent the better part of ten months flirting with death, in more ways than one, only to have it all go to waste like this.

“I don’t,” says Bond in reply, with a composure he didn’t know he possessed. “Want you to leave, that is.”

“...Really?”

Hope shouldn’t be such a good look on Q, but when it blooms on his face, quick and earnest, Bond is suddenly reminded of why he’s made the decision that he has.

“Yes, really," Bond says, sighing as he does, and as the saying goes, in for a penny, in for a pound, right?

He reaches for Q's wrist, then, and with his fingers wrapped lightly around the small circumference of it, he tugs Q along with him as he starts to walk.

"Come on," he says, Q stumbling after him in wide-eyed confusion. "You still owe me an explanation or five, and for that, we're going to need coffee."

 

* * *

 

Despite its slightly ridiculous name, Bibliotic Hello! is supposed to serve one of the best coffees in Kyoto, Q obviously falling a little in love with the place the moment he steps in.

Set up as it is in an old, traditional Japanese townhouse, there’s an old-world charm to its decor, bookshelves of solid wood lined up against the entirety of its western wall and warm lights, the smell of a good, strong roast welcoming them in from the night.

“It was a recommendation from a colleague," Bond says as a means of explanation the moment Q looks questioningly up at him, and when Q makes a knowing sound, saying "Ah, double-oh three?", Bond just counts it as a minor achievement that he doesn't wonder too much anymore, how Q just seems to _know_ these things.

That, and the fact that Q also seems to know how to speak fluent, colloquial Japanese as well, trading brief small-talk with the barista over the counter when he gives their orders.

“Talent that comes with the job description?” Bond asks dryly as they make their way to a table nestled in a far corner, Q setting down two mugs along with a slice of cake he simply couldn’t have stayed away from.

“I have no East Asian suppliers, actually, but–….”

Even if it takes a long moment, Q does eventually catch on to the look that Bond is giving him, stopping short with an apologetic “Oh, you were referring to…”

“The other thing, yes.”

Fiddling with his dessert fork, Q carefully spears a strawberry off the top of his cake-slice before he speaks

“The other thing,” he says with faint amusement. “Now that’s one way to put it. But it’s not a talent, really, it’s just...a side-effect?” Q twirls the fork in his hands, having taken the strawberry off with a delicate bite. “You pick up things here and there, over the years.”

“Like making coffee, for example?”

Looking up from where he’d started to demolish one corner of the mixed-berry shortcake in between them, Q smirks.

“Now that, I actually took courses. One has a lot of time, you know, after retirement.”

 

Because this night honestly can’t get any stranger, Bond just tells himself to take it all in stride, hiding his sentiments about this new revelation by trying to steal a blueberry from Q’s plate.

“Death gets to retire?” he asks, as blasé as possible. “So it wasn’t you, then, that first time on the roof in Kandahar?”

“Roof in...Kandahar?” Q pauses from where he’d been trying to help keep the blueberry in place long enough for Bond to get it with the tines of his fork. “So _that’s_ what he was going on about,” he mutters under his breath. “I should have–”

Bond clears his throat a little louder than necessary and Q just looks up, sheepish.

“Sorry,” he says. With some creative maneuvering, he’s managed to get Bond the blueberry, though by now, Bond doesn’t really care too much for it. “It’s just that my replacement, he likes to update me sometimes, you see, about how things are going in the places I used to work in. For London, the SIS is still relatively new and exciting in the grand scheme of things, so you can see why he can get quite excited about it whenever he gets to follow you lot around.”

“Follow us? As in what, the agents?”

“Mm.” Trying to get a piece of shortcake onto his fork, Q just nods for the time being. “He was a bit disappointed when double-oh three got relocated out here, actually. Perkins is a bit of wildcard, given his age, so Cabhan’s been following him closer than most.”

Looking up from his pursuit of shortcake only to catch the look of dismay on Bond’s face, Q falters for a moment, before suddenly realising what he must have been implying.

“It’s not what you think,” he says hurriedly. “Contrary to what modern depictions of us may have led you all to believe, just because we’re around someone doesn’t always mean that they’re about to shuffle off the mortal coil.”

“But it does mean that there’s the possibility?”

“There’s always a possibility, like it or not. You could be sitting in this cafe right now and still have at least a 0.8% chance of dying. Or less, maybe, given that I’m here, but my point still stands.”

“So–,” Bond says slowly as he sets his mug down on the table. “What is it you do, then, exactly, beyond calculating our chances of dying down to the decimal?”

The lift of Q’s shoulder is casual, as if he were talking about upcoming train strikes or the next match at the Emirates, rather than the logistics of life and death itself.

“Observe, for most part. You lot have enough agency to actually determine most, if not all of what comes your way, so when push comes to shove, all we really need to do is just...wait, usually. Then it’s just matter of patting someone on the back and sending them on.”

“Basically an over-glorified door greeter, then?”

Having chipped off a larger than usual piece of shortcake, Q has just managed to get it onto his fork, lifting it off the plate with care.

“ _This_ over-glorified door greeter–,” he says as he balances the cake precariously across the tines of his fork with intent concentration, “–has saved your life more than once this year, so if you’d like to give me some recognition for that, now would be a good time to do so.”

“Didn’t you just say you were retired, though?”

Q is chewing, so it’s with cake still in his mouth that he shrugs again.

_Is that a problem_? he seems to imply.

“If you’re retired,” Bond points out patiently, “Are you even still even supposed to be doing whatever it is you’re doing?”

“I’m easing myself into it, what can I say.”

“And this easing process, it’s been going on since…?”

“Is that something you really want to know?” Setting his fork down for a moment to pick his mug of tea up, Q regards Bond over the rim for a long moment. “Because it’s not exactly polite to go about fishing for someone’s age, you know.”

“But if I said that I didn’t just want you for your body?”

Q huffs, not quite a laugh, but not quite a sigh either, and like this, it’s almost like they’re back in that corner cafe in London, Q still just a barista and Bond, still just another customer with a regular table down at the front.

“Then I’ll commend you for the smoothness of your lies, Bond, and tell you that Cromwell would have made very good use of you.”

“Cromwell?” Now history isn’t Bond’s strongest subject, but all those dry, introductory briefings on the SIS hadn’t been all for nothing. “Cromwell, as in Thomas Cromwell? Beheaded in the year of Our Lord 1540 for espionage, _that_ Cromwell?”

In return, Q just goes back to eating his cake, leaving Bond to come to terms with this new nugget of information.

“Well,” Bond says at length once the math has resolved itself and he’s _still_ not too sure about how old Q really could be. “Evidently, we’ve been lied to all this time, with all the images that we’ve come up with for death. Now that I’ve seen the real thing, I don’t think I expected it to look this…”

“Young?” suggests Q.

He smiles, slight and more tentative than anything Bond has ever seen from him, and suddenly, Bond is struck by the realisation that this is the first time he’s seen an actual smile on Q’s face the entire night

“Good looking,” Bond corrects, and the grin that spreads on Q’s face is like sunshine itself.

 

* * *

 

Later, Bond finds out that if Q wasn’t at Kandahar, he was, at least, in Guilin.

“You remembered?” Q asks, surprised when Bond brings it up. “I was sure that you wouldn’t, given how much morphine that Zhou had you on. Then again–…” He pauses, chasing the last smears of cream around the sides of his plate, “–I suppose I might have been a little careless, going as far as to make coffee.”

“A little?” echoes Bond. “You made me think I was _hallucinating_ for a week.”

“Sorry,” comes the reply, though Q doesn’t seem as if he’s very sorry at all. “But at least I didn’t do the same in Berlin, okay?”

Faintly defensive, Q lifts his head from where he’d been picking at a stray crumb.

“The Burundi Mubuga is even more limited than whatever I gave you in Guilin,” he says, “So I’d appreciate it, really, if you could admire that bit of self-restraint.”

“Self-restraint–…” Bond has to look away for a second, yet another realisation joining the slew of others he’d been handed tonight. “That was you too? _You_ killed that man?”

“Would you rather that I didn’t?” Q shoots back. “I was lucky, that Cabhan thought to give me a heads up about it.”

“So you just...killed him?”

“Expedited some things, technically.”

The lack of remorse and stone-cold unrepentance on Q’s face would be terrifying, if Bond hadn’t just split half a shortcake with Death.

“I heard from my Berlin counterpart that he had a high chance of being reaped within the week, anyways,” Q continues on, as if it’s nothing. “So I didn’t see a reason for him to take you down with him, okay?”

And as if confessing to literal homicide isn’t bad enough, Q has to add, too, almost petulantly:

“He was going through your things,” he says, grumbling a little. “I had to stop him before he took anything that you might miss.”

At this point, Bond doesn’t know whether to even be surprised or relieved anymore, with each startling new revelation, though the longer he sits here, the less startling each new one becomes.

“That was you too, with the box?” Bond asks, wearily. “You do know that you put it back on the wrong end of the table, right? And that I spent another good few hours wondering if I had gone mad, _again_?”

“I’m...sorry?”

Defensiveness creeping back into his posture again, Q just shakes his head though, this time.

“But as for the rest,” he says, “I’m not sorry at all, in the slightest. Alia probably owes me one as well, now, for taking some of the workload off her hands.”

“Alia being your German–...no, wait, you know what? Nevermind that for the moment.” Bond sets the mug that he’d been holding back down onto the table, the coffee inside it already gone undrinkable anyways, given how it’s been far too long since he’s actually drank from it. “Is this what you’ve been doing the entire time? Following me around to make sure that I don’t die before my time?

“It’s a myth,” sniffs Q, completely and conveniently ignoring the rest. “No one actually has a time, you know.”

“Stop deflecting and answer the question, Q.”

“What’s it to you, if I do?”

Because then that would mean that you’ve cared for almost as long as I have.

Because then that would mean that we’ve been idiots, this entire time.

“Everything,” Bond says, simply, and when Death looks up at him from across tepid, half-filled cups of coffee, there’s a brief flicker of what might be hope, what could be understanding in his eyes.

“It’d mean absolutely everything.”

 

* * *

 

Later, meandering down Nijo Dori and with takeaway coffees in hand, Bond has to ask, as well:

“Did Moneypenny manage to get to you, this morning?”

“You mean Eve?” Q is sipping hot coffee from his cardboard cup, finally having consented to put aside the brown-rice tea for a while and actually try Bibliotic’s in-house blend. “She did. Bought three muffins to go, too, said that her boss likes things like that for morning tea.”

“Liar, she probably ate them all herself.”

The backroads are quiet, this time of the night, and while there’s traffic still passing on the main road of Oike Dori, it’s a muffled, faraway sound, the sound of Q’s laughter louder than anything else.

“Whoever the muffins were for–,” Q says once he’s sobered a little, “–I appreciate the sentiment, all the same.”

“Didn’t someone buy five muffins, the last time I was at the cafe?”

Going from the eyeroll that he gets from Q, Bond takes it that he has Q’s unofficial blessing to continue. And so continue he does:

“I mean–,” Bond says blithely, “–if that’s all it takes for your eternal gratitude, you could have just told me from the outset and I would have bought ten muffins the first time. Twenty, even. Maybe even thirty, if Moneypenny wants some.”

It’s only because Bond is trying very hard not to accidentally spill hot coffee all over himself that Q manages to land half of a light punch on Bond’s shoulder, Bond barely dodging it before he ducks away, laughing as he does.

“You know very well what I mean,” mutters Q. “But you know what? Thank you, all the same, for ruining the moment.”

“Sorry, sorry.” Taking the five, six steps necessary to bring him back to Q’s side again, Bond dips his head in a fake show of meek apology. “You can start again, if you want to.”

Q thinks for a moment. Says, “No,” after a second or two. “It’s too late, unfortunately. The moment’s gone.”

“Really? You’re sure?”

In reply, Q just takes another sip of coffee, feigning nonchalance.

“I’m sure,” he says. “Of course, I _could_ have elaborated on how much I appreciated the fact that you wanted to tell me you wouldn’t be coming in that morning, especially after the events of the evening before, but…” Making a small _tch_ sound of disappointment, Q shakes his head. “No, none of that. Not anymore. Like I said, the moment’s gone.”

It’s the rush of caffeine in his veins, probably, and the giddy sensation of being alive and in love with Death, but whatever the cause, Bond still doesn’t think twice before he bumps his shoulder against Q’s.

“Pity,” he says, walking close. “I think I would have liked to discuss those events that you mentioned.”

“You...would?”

If Q doesn’t exactly stop in his tracks, then he does at least slow his walk enough for it to be indicative of how Bond has inadvertently touched on something that he’d clearly been brooding on, Q looking over at Bond with muted question.

“I would, yes. And in exact detail, too,” Bond just continues, airily, “But like you said, the moment’s gone, so…”

When Bond finally allows himself to stop looking pointedly ahead and finally turn his head aside to look at Q instead, the tips of the latter’s ears have gone slightly pink, the only other indication that Bond is prodding at a point of potential interest.

Mutual interest too, considering.

“So?” Speaking over the rim of his cup, Q has picked up where Bond has trailed off, turning suggestion into question. “Is there something you’d like to propose, Bond?”

“Now that you mention it, Q, I think there is.”

Q.

Bond feels the word, the letter, the weight of it roll of his tongue and now that they’re at the end of this long, slow game that they’ve been playing across coffee cups and continents, the only thing he can think of at this point is all the things it has come to represent.

Q for queries, at first, for questions.

(“Coffee? For the record, I'm asking for reputation's sake again, since this is a cafe, albeit one that's still technically closed.”)

And Q for quirks, too, adored beyond reason.

(“I have other mugs, I’ll have you know. I like drinking tea at home and I happen to like drinking tea out of this mug, so it comes home with me.”)

Q for quagmires. Quarrels and quandaries, reconciled, though Bond has to wonder if they’ll ever truly be resolved.

(“That was you too? _You_ killed that man?” “Would you rather that I didn’t?”)

No matter, though. There’ll be time for that, soon enough.

For now:

“Hold that for a moment, will you?” Bond asks, pressing his cup into the palm of Q’s other hand. “I’d hate for this to spill.”

“What are you–”

Q for quiescent, when Bond gently cradles the curve of Q’s cheek and as he tilts Q’s head up towards him, Bond bends down to meet him halfway

“So that was my proposal,” Bond says against the arch of Q’s mouth and then it’s Q for quickening, too, the way Q’s smile spreads. “Now tell me, is the moment back? Or do you think we need to try again?”

“Try again, I think.”

Quiet, spoken like a sigh and Q tastes like coffee when Bond leans in to kiss him once more.

“Definitely, definitely try again.”

 

 

_Darkling I listen; and, for many a time_  
_I have been half in love with easeful Death,_  
_Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,_  
_To take into the air my quiet breath;_

 

fin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I'm going to be ridiculously disappointed, the moment I catch up on sleep and realise what sort of nonsense I've posted here, but for now, I'm just REALLY EXCITED THAT THIS IS DONE YEAHHHH. If...this seemed rushed at the end, I'm going to come clean now and say that yes, it was. Incredibly. If I had the time and lbh, the patience, this would have gone on for another 2, 3 chapters, at least (with considerably less sloppy writing, too!) but I had to make the posting date for wip_bigbang 2015, so this hurtled to its fiery end in the space of 24 hours, with 3 hours of sleep somewhere in the middle. 
> 
> /weak laughter. But! It's done! And I've got a ruined body clock just like Bond's, now!
> 
> <3 Thank you so, so much, to everyone who's been reading along and leaving kudos and such lovely comments (!!), I hope this wasn't all too bad, in the end. I'd actually like to play around with this AU a bit more, if possible, so...hopefully it's not _the_ end? This started out as a mindless coffeeshop!AU prompt fic and subsequently grew a (rather terrifying) life of its own, so...yes. 
> 
> Also, thank you to scifishipper@LJ for the wonderful art! <3
> 
> And last, but not least, makes sure you manage your time properly, kids. 
> 
> Take it from me. That's _not_ a good life choice.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [I Am Stretched On Your Grave](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7623214) by [Tokyo_the_Glaive](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tokyo_the_Glaive/pseuds/Tokyo_the_Glaive)




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